The Blackwood convention is almost as old as Contract Bridge. It is obviously very helpful to be able to find out if an ace or two are missing before committing to a slam contract.
But hardly any tournament players still use plain old Blackwood these days. It has been replaced by an extended version, known as Roman Keycard Blackwood (or RKB, as it is commonly written). The reason for this is that the king of trumps is just as important a card as any of the outside aces, for who wants to be in a slam that at best requires a successful finesse against the king of trumps? RKB allows you to avoid such embarrassingly silly contracts.
In addition, Roman Keycard Blackwood can also find out about the presence or absence of the queen of trumps. It was notoriously difficult to find out about the combined strength of the trump suit prior to the invention of RKB and, for those that don't use it, it still is.
So much more information is obtainable from RKB than from its predecessor, plain old Blackwood. However, it does require some effort to remember, to use and to understand. A very much simpler alternative is available, Five-Ace Blackwood, which provides a lot of the benefits but is as easy to remember and use as plain old Blackwood. Nevertheless, nearly all serious partnerships use RKB, and for good reason.
RKB, indeed Blackwood of any type, cannot tell you if you can make a slam. RKB cannot tell you how many tricks you can win, it tells you only how many quick losers you have. A player should not use RKB unless he believes that his side has 12 (or 13) probable winners.
The usual plan is that, having determined that 12 (or 13) winners are probable, if two keycards are found to be missing then the partnership should stop at the five-level. If only one keycard is missing, a small slam should be a good bet: you can afford to lose one trick to an ace or to the king of trumps. If no keycards are missing, and 13 winners seem likely, the partnership should check on the queen of trumps and, possibly, side-suit kings or controls before committing to the grand slam.
The main problem with RKB is that not everyone plays it the same way. This document tells you one of the common ways it is played, but please read about the variations so that you are aware of the different ways your partner might wish to play the system. Make sure that you agree which variations you will play.
Whenever your partnership has decided on a trump suit and a bid of 4NT is made, this is RKB. Also, if the last bid of one member of the partnership has shown a strong suit and the other partner then bids 4NT, that agrees the suit as trumps implicitly and is RKB. We will call the player who bids 4NT the "Senior Hand" or "Captain", as he has (at least for now) taken charge of steering the partnership to the right contract.
The responses to RKB are in steps, just like with plain old Blackwood. But RKB is asking about the five "keycards" rather than the four aces. The five keycards are the four aces and the king of trumps. The partner of the RKB bidder shows how many keycards he has as follows:
Note: The above is the standard system of step responses known as "3014" (because the 0/3 step comes before the 1/4 step, as logically it should). The "3014" method will be played by everyone who has not explicitly agreed to play the other variation, known as "1430". Strong club system players may find that the 1430 alternative is superior for them. My opinion is that the "1430" variation is superior even if your partnership plays a standard bidding system. But you should assume that you are playing "3014" unless you have explicity agreed to play "1430".
If Senior Hand bids the trump suit at any level, it is a sign-off and Junior Hand must pass. There is one exception: if the sign-off was at the five level, and if Junior Hand's response was 0/3 or 1/4 and he has 3 or 4 keycards, he must not pass. He continues by responding as if he had been asked about possession of the Queen of Trumps (see below).
If Senior Hand jumps to a slam in a denomination other than the agreed trump suit, that is also a sign-off. Junior Hand must assume that Senior Hand knows what he is doing. 6NT or any grand slam by Senior Hand is also a sign-off, whether jumped to or not.
If Senior Hand does not sign off, his bid is a further ask. There are different asks that he can make, and they are each covered below.
In all cases, the negative response (or the minimum response) is a return to the trump suit. This is logical — if Junior Hand's answer is negative, Senior Hand probably does not wish to go on or why would he be asking?
If responder has 2 or 5 keycards, his response will have indicated whether or not he also has the queen of trumps. Otherwise, if Senior Hand doesn't have it himself, he may want to ask about it.
Senior Hand asks about the queen of trumps by bidding the next available suit other than the agreed trump suit. Responder replies:
Note that you get information about a specific king, or some useful extra value, as well as the trump queen when using the recommended "return to the trump suit is negative" system. A useful "extra" is one of (a) the queen of partner's first-bid suit; (b) the queen or a doubleton of partner's second-bid suit; (c) extra trump length if you are the long trump hand; or, if no side suits have been bid, (d) third round control in any side suit.
If Senior Hand is looking for a grand slam, he may need to check that enough kings are in place. In fact, he may need to know that the right kings are in place, which is why I recommend the "specific king" response system used here. He does this by bidding 5NT after any reply. He cannot do this if the auction has already reached or passed 5NT, of course, and he will then have to fall back on "specific suit asks" instead.
Responder replies to 5NT as follows:
When Junior Hand has shown one king, Senior Hand may still want to ask about a second king. He does it by bidding the suit that he wishes to know about.
Note that the steps are counted ignoring the trump suit. Thus if spades are trumps and Senior Hand makes a second king ask in diamonds, by bidding 6♦, Junior Hand bids 6♠ without the king, 6♥ (1 step) with the king and no third round control, 6NT (2 steps, not including spades) with king doubleton, and 7♦ with the king and the queen.
The final part of RKB is a sweeping-up operation, to discover any last piece of information that Senior Hand might need to know before setting the contract. Senior Hand may still not know about an important king (maybe he has A Q J x x in a side suit), or he may be interested in a queen or whether partner can ruff the third round.
Any bid of a side suit by Senior Hand asks responder to show his holding in the suit by steps. Junior Hand replies:
Note that only second and third round control is being asked about.
If responder has the ace it will already have been counted and Senior Hand will know about it.
Responder gives the same reply with
The aim of the Specific Suit Asks (and more than one suit may be asked about) is (a) to see if a grand slam is sensible; and (b) to see if the better-scoring (and possibly safer) 7NT may be on.
As mentioned in the notes above, there is no universal standard for RKB to match the universal standard of plain old Blackwood. But if you agree the following with your partner:
your partner will easily understand that you mean the system given here. Either that or he will look considerably dazed and ask you what the hell you are talking about!
All of this, and much more, can be found in Eddie Kantar's book "Roman Keycard Blackwood: Slam Bidding for the 21st Century". It is a difficult and complex book, but very thorough. I recommend it only to real enthusiasts, but I recommend it very highly to those who consider themselves such.
If you want to try before you buy, or you just prefer to read it on-screen for free, you can download a ZIP file of the book from Daniel's Systems Page — a useful resource for anyone interested in bidding systems.
Author: Chris Burton
Gravesend Bridge Club