August 2014 - 23

t bridge, the concept of building a better mousetrap refers
almost exclusively to the idea
of refining an already existing convention. Frequently, the unspoken implication is that the change will be long on
system memory requirements and low
on practical benefits.
Eddie Kantar did the hard work 40
years ago when he introduced Key
Card Blackwood into the mainstream;
this month's project will be to modify
the continuations in a couple of specific areas, so as to allow for more subtle
exploration.
One extension of Roman Key Card
Blackwood that emphasizes holdings
likely to be of most value is an idea disseminated by George Rosenkranz. It's
called spiral scan.
"What is spiral scan?" you ask. Before answering, let's look at the sort of
auctions that cause problems for even
relatively sophisticated partnerships.
You sit South.
♠K 10 5 4 3 ♥K 9 4 2 ♦A 5 ♣Q 4
West

North

East

3♣
Pass
Pass

3♥
4NT
5NT

Pass
Pass
Pass

South
1♠
4♥
5♥
?

You are playing the 1430 variety
of Roman Key Card Blackwood. 5♥
shows two key cards without the trump
queen. Partner's 5NT asks for specific
kings. Should you go past 6♥ to show
your ♠K? Bear in mind that if you play
numeric responses to 5NT, you will be
no better off - perhaps even worse. A
convention called Kickback (slated for
future discussion), which uses 4♠ as
Key Card Blackwood when hearts are
agreed, might be an improvement - but
even that isn't necessarily clear in a
sequence where spades have been bid
naturally.

♠A4 ♥AQ653 ♦4 ♣KQ653
West
Pass
Pass
Pass

North
1♥
3♣
4NT
?

East
Pass
Pass
Pass

South
2♦
4♣
5♥(1)

(1) Two key cards, no trump queen.
It's your guess. Will partner produce
the ♥K - which gives 7♣ excellent
play - or will even the small slam
struggle on a spade lead?
Both these auctions demonstrate the
deficiencies in traditional continuations after asking for key cards.

The fix

Let's try and repair the problem by
making a small change to the responses. Following a 1430 RKC response, the
first non-sign-off step still asks for the
trump queen, and that's where spiral
scan starts. The most critical feature is
the trump queen, as before. The logic
of the subsequent replies has answerer
showing his most useful features in the
most efficient order.

Logic dictates order

Here's the order in which features
are shown using spiral scan:
⦁ Trump queen
⦁ King in any suit bid by answerer
determined by partnership agreement to be five cards or longer, if
there is one
⦁ King in inquirer's long suit
⦁ King in answerer's four-card suit
⦁ Remaining kings in ascending
order (i.e., clubs, diamonds, hearts
and spades)
⦁ Answering with the first step denies the first card
⦁ Bypassing the first step and bidding the second step shows the
first card but not the second
⦁ And so on

In the first auction, not all kings are
created equal; some are more equal
than others. You can imagine that if
the inquirer has a 2=6=3=2 hand with
the doubleton ♠A Q, he might have 13
tricks facing the ♠K. However, what if
partner holds:
♠A ♥A Q J 10 8 7 ♦9 ♣A 10 5 3 2?
Now the ♠K is almost irrelevant;
what he needs for the grand is the ♣K.
Holding the wrong king, you had better
not go past 6♥. Answering specific
kings will prove more useful than
showing the number of kings, but that
won't always suffice. Using spiral scan,
opener would ask, using 5♠ over 5♥,
and answerer's 5NT response would
deny the spade king. Inquirer's 6♣
continuation would ask for the club
king, enabling him to place the contract over the response.
Let's revisit the second auction.
♠A4 ♥AQ653 ♦4 ♣KQ653
West
Pass
Pass
Pass

North
1♥
3♣
4NT
5♠(2)

East
Pass
Pass
Pass

South
2♦
4♣
5♥(1)

(1) Two key cards, no trump queen.
(2) Spiral scan.
After the 5♥ response to Blackwood,
the location of the trump queen is
already known. Spiral scan focuses on
the kings in logical order: hearts (the
bid suit), then the remaining kings
in numeric order, diamonds before
spades. The full sequence is: ♥K, ♦K,
♠K, ♥Q, ♦Q, ♠Q.
In this example, we assume that
diamonds could be a four-card suit -
hence, hearts outranks diamonds in
the spiral-scan order of things. In partnerships for whom 2♦ guarantees at
least five, diamonds would come first
in a spiral scan auction.

August 2014 Bridge Bulletin

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of August 2014