🚀 go-pugleaf

Steve <spam-buster@iname.com> wrote in message news:378E102F.26C6@iname.com...
> Last night pard and I held:
> 
> SOUTH (dealer)
> Qxx
> 10xx
> QJ
> AKQ10x
> 
> NORTH
> KJx
> AJ8xxx
> AK
> Jx
> 
> Most Souths opened 1C or 1NT, depending on methods, and a huge number of
> pairs got to the impossible 6H contract.
> 
> The diamond duplication is, indeed, as ugly as it gets ..but I wondered
> whether folk in here had methods/suggestions to avoid reaching such a
> doomed contract.

Yes, there is a very popular one; it's called "Roman Key-Card Blackwood".

Suppose the bidding starts, for example:
    S      N
    1C    1H
    2C    2S
    3H    4NT

North's 4NT asks partner for "Aces" _including the Heart (trump) king among
the "Aces"_.  These "five Aces" are called "Key-cards", or "Keys".

South responds 5D, showing just 1 key (or, in a version of the convention
known as "14-30", he responds 5C, to show 1 key; 5D would show 0),
and North immediately knows he's missing 2 Aces (no slam then, clearly)
or one Ace and the trump King (in which case slam cannot be better than
50%, but can easily be worse, all the way down to 0% as her, and so it
should not be bid anyway).

So, North signs off in 5H, and there N-S rest.  Higher than one would like,
but still MUCH better than 6!-).


There are other ways to stop below this slam, but RKCB is by far the
easiest one.  It also includes all sorts of refinements (asking for the Q
of trumps, etc etc), but, to avoid this specific bad slam, you only need
the barest, simplest version of key-card asking rather than ace-asking.


Alex