IMPROVE YOUR PLAY #18 with Larry Matheny
Newer players tend to want to use all of the latest conventions.  This leads to confusion when a convention is forgotten or misused.  Also, a natural bid is often lost in order to use a convention.  However, there are some agreements that are easy to recognize and employ bids that have no other meaning.  Take a look at this hand.

VUL: N-S
SCORING: Matchpoints

Hand #18
Dlr   E
Vul N-S
S AK1095
H QJ10876
D
C K2
S Q763
H 54
D Q102
C QJ98
    
S J842
H 3
D AJ83
C 7654

S
H AK92
D K97654
C A103
West North
 East
 South

  Pass
 1D
 Pass 1H  Pass
 3H
  Pass
    5D    Pass
     5S
    Pass
     7H All Pass


BIDDING:  After hearing his partner's 1H response, South's hand with 14 high card points and a void was now worth a jump to 3H.  North was immediately interested in slam and wanted to check for aces.  However, regular Blackwood or even Roman Keycard would only tell him the number of aces/keycards, not which ones.  To solve this dilemma, North jumped to 5D unleashing the rarely used Exclusion Blackwood convention.  This asked South for the number of keycards (aces plus the king of trumps) held OUTSIDE of the diamond suit.  South's two-step response showed 0-3 keycards and North confidently bid the grand slam.

PLAY:  North won the opening trump lead, cashed the ace and king of both black suits, and had a high cross-ruff for the rest of the tricks. 

So many players routinely use Blackwood before bidding a slam.  This is another example where asking for the number of aces  would not help.

Copyright ©2007 Larry Matheny.