This Week in Bridge
(582) Kickback Keycard Ask
© AiB Robert S. Todd
Level: 10 of 10 robert@advinbridge.com
General
One of our most commonly used tools for determining if we should bid slam or not is Keycard Blackwood. The most popular version of this is 1430 Keycard. This tool allows us to exchange a lot of useful information with partner. We attempt to determine how many of the 5 Keycards we have, plus we also hope to be able to determine if we have the Queen of the trump suit. When ♠ is the trump suit, then we have plenty of bidding space to communicate, but when lower-ranking suits are the trump suit, using 4NT to ask for Keycards leaves us little room to exchange information without getting the auction too high. To fix this problem, some partnerships use Minorwood for their minor suit Keycard auctions, but this does not solve our problem in the ♥ suit. There is another approach, called Kickback, that tries to solve this problem. Let’s see how this works.
1430 Keycard and Some Issues
When partner uses 4NT to ask for Keycards, these are the normal answers, playing 1430:
5♣ 1 or 4 Keycards
5♦ 3 or 0 Keycards
5♥ 2 Keycards without the Queen
5♠ 2 Keycards with the Queen
When partner answers 5♥ or 5♠, we know about all the Keycards and the trump Queen, but if partner answers 5♣ or 5♦, we do not know about the trump Queen. We need to ask partner about the Queen. We use the cheapest available bid to do this!
Example 1 – Queen Ask
Opener Responder
1♠ 3♠
4NT 5♦
5♥
This 5♥ bid asks Responder if they have the trump Queen. Responder uses similar rebids to above to then further describe their hand.
When ♥ is the trump suit and partner’s answer to our Keycard ask is 5♦, we do not have any space to ask them for the trump Queen and keep the auction below slam.
Example 2 – Problem Queen Ask
Opener Responder
1♥ 3♥
4NT 5♦
__?
Here we cannot use 5♥ to ask for the trump Queen; 5♥ is to play. When ♥ is the trump suit, we have one fewer step available to communicate with partner. This can lead to us having to guess if partner has the trump Queen or not when deciding if we should bid slam.
Kickback in Hearts
One way to solve the problem of not having enough space to communicate with partner is to use a bid other than 4NT to ask for Keycards. Kickback is a method that agrees to use 4♠ as our Keycard ask, instead of 4NT, when ♥ is trump. If we use 4♠ as our asking bid, then these become our new response steps:
4NT 1 or 4 Keycards
5♣ 3 or 0 Keycards
5♦ 2 Keycards without the Queen
5♥ 2 Keycards with the Queen
This has the advantage of making both the 4NT bid and the 5♣ bid, the answers that leave the trump Queen unknown, further below our 5♥ bid – the places where we have to make our big decision about bidding slam or not.
Example 3 – Kickback Queen ask after 1 or 4 Answer
Opener Responder
1♥ 3♥
4♠ 4NT
__?
Here we can use 5♣ as our Queen ask and we have plenty of space to determine the answer to this question before we commit to slam.
Note: Because of the extra bidding space available below our 5♥ “to play” bid, some partnerships use 5♦ as our King ask. This saves even more bidding space, leaving us more room to discuss our Specific Kings below 6♥, allowing us to determine whether 6NT or a grand slam is the best place to play.
Example 4 – Kickback Queen ask after 3 or 0 Answer
Opener Responder
1♥ 3♥
4♠ 5♣
__?
Here we use 5♦ as our Queen ask. This is the problem auction we had before. When our 5♦ answer was 1 or 4 Keycards, we did not have space to ask for the Queen without committing to slam. By moving the auction one step lower, we have room to accomplish this.
Kickback in Hearts – Other Changes
In a normal auction, when ♥ is the trump suit, if we bid 4♠ it is often used as a control showing bid, letting partner know that we have control in the ♠ suit (whether this promises 1st round control or 2nd round control is part of our partnership bidding agreements.) When we use 4♠ as our Keycard-asking bid in Kickback, we lose this 4♠ control showing bid. Our solution to this is to use 4NT as our bid showing a ♠ control.
Example 5 – 4NT ♠ Control
Opener Responder
1♥ 3♥
4♣ 4NT
This 4NT bid shows that we have a control in ♠.
One issue with this agreement is that when we make a ♠ control showing bid, we can no longer ask partner for Keycards (we are past our 4♠ Keycard-asking bid). This makes a ♠ control showing bid at this level similar to a 5♣ or 5♦ control showing bid and forces us to make our slam bidding decision without knowing about our number of Keycards.
Kickback for Minor Suits – Redwood
As we saw above, we sometimes run out of bidding space when ♥ is the trump suit. If ♦ or ♣ is the trump suit, then we run out of bidding space on even more bidding sequences (sometimes getting to slam off two Keycards!) One solution to this is to use this Kickback-style bid (using the suit just above our trump suit to ask for Keycards) for the minor suits as well. That means that when ♦ is the trump suit, we use 4♥ as our Keycard-asking bid and when ♣ is the trump suit, we use 4♦ as the Keycard-asking bid.
This agreement is called Redwood, because it uses the red suits (♦ and ♥) as our Keycard-asking bids.
Some partnerships choose to play Redwood only, using these bids as Keycard for the minors, without playing 4♠ as the Keycard ask for the ♥ suit.
Example 6 – Redwood Answers for ♦
Opener Responder
1♦ 2♦*
3♦ 4♥
__?
Here are the answers to the 4♥ Keycard ask.
4♠ 1 or 4 Keycards
4NT 3 or 0 Keycards
5♣ 2 Keycards without the Queen
5♦ 2 Keycards with the Queen
All of these bids give us space to ask for the Queen and keep the auction below 5♦.
Example 7 – Redwood Answers for ♣
Opener Responder
1♣ 2♣*
4♦ __?
Here are the answers to the 4♦ Keycard ask.
4♥ 1 or 4 Keycards
4♠ 3 or 0 Keycards
4NT 2 Keycards without the Queen
5♣ 2 Keycards with the Queen
All of these bids give us space to ask for the Queen and keep the auction below 5♣.
One interesting bidding sequence is when partner answers 4♠ over Redwood - sometimes we want to play in 4NT.
Example 8 – 4NT to Play
Opener Responder
1♦ 2♦*
3♦ 4♥
4♠ __?
Many partnerships choose to use 4NT to play in this auction and 5♣ as our Queen ask. This can be useful, especially in Matchpoints, where playing 5-minor is often a bad result.
But be careful: sometimes there is no space to use 4NT as a place to play.
Example 8 – 4NT Queen Ask
Opener Responder
1♣ 2♣*
3♣ 4♦
4♠ __?
After partner bids 4♠, showing 3 or 0 Keycards, 5♣ would be to play, so 4NT is needed as our Queen ask. In this auction there is not an extra step that allows us to use 4NT to play.
Conclusion
Kickback is a tweak to our partnership bidding agreements that attempts to solve the problem of running out of bidding space in our Keycard discussion when a suit other than ♠ is the trump suit. This can be an extremely useful convention if we have a partnership that likes gadgets and is looking to optimize our bidding. But be careful, this system comes with complexities that often create bidding misunderstandings.