As I was away this week I am grateful to my special correspondent (aka Mary) for this week's hand which is number 14. After the very strong balanced hands of recent weeks North has only a meagre 24 count with a 5 card suit.

 

At most tables there will be 3 passes to North who will open 2 clubs (or 2D if playing Benjamin). Either way South has an easy 2 spade response. If anyone feels the absence of an ace and a king should mean a negative response I suggest they change their methods to allow the responder to a strong opening to make a positive response on any reasonable hand especially if it doesn't take up much bidding room. At Mary's table, Brian did respond 2 spades and Mary rebid 3 hearts.  Brian must have been well impressed with that development and he tried 4NT for keycards. I guess  Mary was unsure as to which suit had been agreed and replied  5 diamonds to show 1 or 4 aces  which is why Brian bid only 6 hearts. Clearly all 13 tricks are cold against any distribution barring a first round ruff. If Mary realised that her 5 diamond bid showed 1 or 4 when she actually had 5 keycards for hearts and her partner still bid 6 hearts perhaps she might have raised to 7 but this is not a recommended way to bid. Clearly it is best to have an agreement as to which suit is agreed but it can be difficult in some sequences.

 

For those who are not familiar with keycard blackwood it is a very useful agreement used by most top pairs. The king of the agreed suit is counted as a 5th ace. if a suit has not been clearly agreed then the last suit bid by the partnership is taken as the agreed suit so Brian's jump to 4NT agreed hearts. The normal responses to keycard blackwood are :-

 

5C - 0 or 3

5D - 1 or 4

5H - 2 or 5 without the queen of the agreed suit

5S - 2 or 5 with the queen of the agreed suit 

 

In my opinion the hand should be opened 2C with a 2S response and North should rebid 2NT to show the general hand type and leave more room for South to express his hand shape. In this case South will rebid 3H and North can support by raising to 4H or making a cuebid at the 4 level. Having opened with a 2C bid North is totally minimum and has no reason to be making bids like 4NT especially as it is known that the response will be showing no keycards. In fact the South hand is much more suitable for asking for keycards as he can judge how the keycards cover his losers. The response showing 5 means he can picture partner with the S ace H ace/king  D ace and C ace. As this adds up to only 19 points North will also have additional high cards to justify his opening bid so South can jump straight to 7H and gather most of the matchpoints.

 

At some table South will open the bidding to show a weakfish 2 suiter - lets say 2S to show spades and another suit 7-10 points. North will respond 2NT  to ask for the other suit and South will bid 3H. North now knows that there are no losers unless the S king is missing. How to find out? If he asks for aces and then kings south will show one king which could be clubs which does not help. My suggestion is North in this sequences and similar ones can bid 4C as an artificial slam try in hearts and 4D in spades. This time we agree spades and then ask for keycards getting the answer of one and allowing us to bid 7H with complete confidence.

 

Having looks at the results on the board a few pairs tried 6NT presumably because it was pairs and hoped to score the extra 10 points for the NT slam.  With the big heart fit producing extra tricks will ruffs this was a very poor choice of contract. However this time the S queen was onside doubleton to give the 12th trick and the club finesse works as well for a 13th trick - about a 25% chance. So the NT bidders triumphed but were lucky especially Liz & Don who bid and made 7NT for a top. Perhaps they thought that it was so obvious to bid to 7H that they would take a chance. In fact nobody bid the grand slam in hearts. the 5 pairs who only reached a game contract should be looking at their bidding methods to try to find out why they missed such an easy slam.