February 19, 2014 – Blackwood is Your Last Resort!

Let’s start with a very simple question – what do you need to make a slam?  The answer is pretty simple.  Lots of winners, not many losers!  Winners, and potential winners come from our strength, high cards and fit.  Many new players, as soon as they sense enough strength to consider a slam, get excited, bounce up and down in their seat, and in the auction, they bounce up to four notrump, check on key cards, and decide from there.  This is very, very wrong. 
The next things to worry about are quick losers.  Quick losers arise in one of two ways – two top losers in a suit, or too many missing aces.  Blackwood only confirms the presence of enough aces.  Slam bidding should always follow this type of route:

 

1.  Decide that we have close to sufficient strength to win twelve tricks.  Do we have around 33 high card points?  Do we have some big fit? 
2. Verify that we have first or second round control in every suit.
3. Finally, make sure we have adequate key cards to underwrite a slam. 

Notice, checking on aces is the very last step.  Blackwood is always a last resort.  This means that Blackwood is a fairly unimportant convention.  We should only use old Black when we are convinced that slam is reasonable.  It is a last-ditch double check.  Could we be off two aces?  Okay, it can’t hurt to find out.  I’ll ask.

Personally, I think aspiring experts, like all of you, would improve your bridge game if you scratched Blackwood off your card entirely, and learned how to bid (and avoid) slams without that crutch. 

Two hands from Sunday got me thinking along these lines:  First, with both sides vulnerable, you pick up:

 
Partner opens one spade.  You bid 2NT, a strong raise, and partner continues with four hearts, showing a second suit, at least five-five.  Your bid?

We are certainly close to a slam.  Partner has shown something along the lines of KJxxx AQxxx ?? ??.  Of course, those question marks had better be helpful, or slam has no chance.  If partner has no club control, slam is down off the top.  Even a singleton club won’t be enough, for a hand like KJxxx AQJxx Jx x has no play for a slam, on a club lead. 

I would continue with a five diamond cue-bid, and leave the rest up to partner.  What I would never do is Blackwood.  That was the bid chosen at the table.  Did it work out?  Yup.  Partner was 5-6-1-1, and slam was cold. 

Two boards later, you pick up this hand:

The auction starts out:

What do you bid? 

Again, you have a very nice hand, and slam is in the wind, but you need help from partner, and you don’t have a diamond control.  Five hearts looks like the best bid from here.  Our South chose that – good bid! – and North carried on to a slam.  South, at the other table, said Blackwood, and bid a slam opposite one ace.  How did the slams fare? 

Not well.  Partner held  65 QJ Q943 AKJ92, and the defense cashed the first two diamonds.  At our table, South bid very well, and North should have quit over five hearts.  South, at the other table, got what he deserved!

By the way, every convention comes with a price.  Even simple Stayman costs.  When you bid 2C over partner’s 1NT opening to ask about majors, you let the next hand bid freely at a low level, or double two clubs.  You also give up other possible meanings for two clubs.  Sometimes the only makeable part-score is two clubs!

Blackwood, even though it should only be used sparingly, as a last resort, is still a great convention because other possible uses for 4NT are unlikely.  Still, if you look at both of these hands, you needed room to cue-bid, and get partner’s input, but our own cue-bid ate up almost all of the bidding room.  On both hands, we would have been much better off if we could bid four notrump as a waiting bid, saying I am still interested in slam, but need to learn more about honor location.  The World Champion Italian Blue Team used four notrump in this manner, and some of the modern Italians use a variant of this today. 

On to play problems.  First off, a simple warm-up hand.  You are in four spades, on a heart lead, with:

There are nine obvious winners, and lots of play for a tenth.  Four spades is cold if the heart finesse is on, or if diamonds split.  Can we guarantee the contract when everything is foul?  How would you play?

The contract is not a complete lock, but it is essentially cold if trumps split 2-1.  The best play is to win the heart ace, trump a club, and lead a trump to dummy.  If both follow, trump another club, trump to dummy, and ruff the last club, keeping a low trump in hand.  This will leave:

 

Now we lead a heart to the queen.  If the king is onside, we have our ten tricks.  If it loses and a diamond comes back, win the queen, trump a heart, and exit a low diamond.  Whoever wins is endplayed.  Finally, if East wins the heart and plays another heart, trump and exit a low diamond.  Again, whoever wins is endplayed, and must play another diamond, killing their diamond trick if they started with four to the ace. 

Notice – finessing a heart at trick one is dangerous.  If East wins and returns a heart or a trump, we no longer have the entries to eliminate hearts and clubs.  Even playing the five from dummy may put the contract in jeopardy if East wins and plays a trump back.

On Board 2 from our match, both declarers got to four spades on this layout:

The addition of the diamond ten makes this much simpler, and the contract is safe even if we finesse in hearts at trick one.  The declarer at the other table started on the line I recommended – heart ace, club ruff, and so on, leading to the ending above:

 

South exited with the heart eight, but let West win the nine.  West continued hearts, so South trumped, played a diamond to the ten, and claimed.  Suppose West had shifted to diamonds.  Is the contract still cold?

Yes, but North must play the diamond queen. 

At our table, declarer finessed in hearts, and trumped the club return.  This made it easy to eliminate both hearts and clubs.  The play continued with a trump to dummy, club ruff, trump up, club ruff, heart to the ace, leaving:

 
Now heart ruff, diamond to the ten, and claim for four or five.  But South lost focus and discarded a diamond on the heart five.  West won and played a diamond through and suddenly the contract was in real danger.  It appeared as though West was originally 2-4-2-5, or possibly 2-4-1-6.  If West had the diamond ace, any play would work.  If East held the diamond ace, and West the jack, then North must play the diamond ten or low.  If East had both the ace and jack, then North had to play the queen to succeed.  Think, think, think, … Declarer called for the diamond queen.  Right!  Here was the full hand (rotated, of course, to make South the declarer):

 
The declarer wasn’t the only player to lose focus here.  East-West were vulnerable, North-South not.  Despite the vulnerability, the East hand looks like a clear-cut take-out double after spades and diamonds are bid.  Yet, the auction started out 1D by North, pass, 1S by South, and West, not East, entered with a double. 

Sorry, but I don’t get that at all.  You need more than a semi-balanced six count to enter the fray.  That flaky double talked East into doubling four spades, so North-South collected +590 and five IMPs. 

I’ll close off with another big swing, Board 11. 

 
With no one vulnerable, and North the dealer, North-South bid to 3NT on this auction:

 

West leads the diamond ten.  Plan the play.

We have three spade winners, if we can take them, and two red aces.  If clubs split, we can develop two club tricks, and an entry to our spades.  That is still only seven winners.  In the mean-time, the opponents will set up at least two diamond tricks, plus their club honors.  So, it looks as though we will need a lot of luck.  For starters, the diamond king had better be onside, and we will probably need the spade jack dropping, or the heart king onside.  If West has the diamond length, with no entry, we may make without the heart finesse, if we can shut out the long diamond, so you should put up the diamond queen at trick one, and lead the club queen next.

 
The cards were pretty friendly: 

Nine tricks were there for the taking, with both finesses onside.  However, our declarer won the first diamond with the ace, as East played the nine, upside down attitude.  Next came a spade to the ace and a low heart from the table, setting up the defenders’ fifth trick. 

That diamond ten lead was very strange.  A normal fourth-best diamond three seems best, but the lead gave East a chance for a great play.  At trick one, East should play the diamond jack, not the nine.  One of the odd fundamentals of deceptive defense is this:

     Play the card you are known to hold!

The lead of the diamond ten denies the jack (and suggests the nine).  If East plays the card he is known to hold, the diamond jack, declarer will almost certainly finesse for the nine later.  Declarer will probably decide the diamonds look like this:

Plays like this are a lot of fun, when you get the chance.  We beat a slam this weekend when partner led a diamond from K109 with the queen in dummy, and I put up the jack.  Declarer chose to play me for KJ doubleton, rather than the king onside.  He could still have recovered, but, convinced that I held the diamond king, he misguessed the ending.