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Dummy’s delight.

If you play Roman Key-Card Blackwood, then today’s bidding question should be very straightforward…or is it? If you do not use this method of checking for aces/key cards, then today’s deal may encourage you to do so.

 

 

You have a pretty promising hand, made even more so by partner opening the bidding at the 1-level. Taking it slowly, you are somewhat surprised that partner’s second bid is not a lowly 2 but a highish value-showing 3. They do have a hand of some promise.

You are itching to wheel out Key-Card but ideally, you would like to make hearts the trump suit. So, you bide your time with 3 (190% forcing!) and are beaten to 4NT by partner. So, your response is?

In olden days, very olden, you would have produced an initial 3 jump shift, which would have summed up most of your hand (no-one has/had a bid to show an 8-card suit playable for no-losers opposite a void). Today, we take it more slowly.

So, we have 2 key-cards in response to 4NT and we do not hold the Q. The correct response to 4NT is 5. There are 2 reasons why we do not want to make that bid. The first and more important is that we want to tell partner we have a running heart suit (or at least AKQ to 6 heaerts, as 3 only promised a 6-card suit). So, bid 5, showing the Q. If by chance, partner is looking at the Q, the message you are sending to them is that you have got extra length in hearts and that missing the Q is not a worry. The other reason to bid 5 is in case partner elected to pass 5 with slam being from their point of view a bit marginal, maybe missing Q and one key-card.

5 brought a further enquiry from partner, about side-suit kings. Enough questions and  another important inference from the bidding. When partner asks for side-suit kings, our side hold all 5 key-cards. No exception! That allows you to end the bidding very quickly. You have 2 missing kings, a singleton opposite the A and even more hearts than 5 showed.

7 is an underbid! Playing Pairs, you may elect to bid 7NT as everyone should be bidding this grand-slam. Did I use the word “should”?

 

Yes, a small hesitation over 5 while partner analyses why both partners seem to hold the Q. North could shut their eyes and pick an opening lead, so unbeatable is this grand-slam. 15 tricks on top. Even the diamond finesse worked!

“Should bid grand-slam”? Well, just 4 of the 16 East-West pairs did, with one having the bragging rights but no more imps for bidding 7NT.  What went wrong? In a 10A Teams event, a further 5 pairs failed even to reach slam.

The above bidding used nothing more than Roman Key Card and 2 important pieces of logic/system agreement:

1.    When the absence of the trump queen does not seem to be important, admit to holding it even if you do not. This often occurs playing 5-card majors when opener asks for Key-Cards and responder has 5 trumps too. While in the above deal, a void heart could still be a problem if hearts were trumps, it would be very strange for partner to ask for key-cards with a void in the asking suit. Their bidding almost guarantees a singleton and very likely more hearts. That 8-card suit opposite 2 small cards is the same trump holding as a 5-5 fit...even better as there is only one way to play the suit (unlike a 5-5 fit with a high honour in each hand!). 

2.    When partner asks for side-suit kings, the message is our side holds all the key-cards. That understanding made the bidding of this grand-slam so much easier.   

 

What a shame so many missed this grand-slam, along with yesterday’s. While yesterday’s required a little ruffing, with the deal above, the grand was “dummy’s delight”, a claim in grand-slam at trick 1.

 Richard Solomon

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