I liked the idea of “exploring” off the beaten path when we would go on hikes. I could travel a little bit away from our trail, but the rule was that I had to look back and make eye contact with an adult before going over a ridge so that I wasn't venturing into the unkown without a way back to safety.

I learned the hard way that it was best to stop walking while making eye contact after I tripped into a particularly prickly bush.

Last month we discussed recognizing slam opportunities. Once you’ve decided that your side belongs in slam, you need to be sure that you’re not blindly venturing there without the safety of four keycards and the trump queen.

The key cards are the four aces plus the king of trump. If you are missing two of those cards, it's easy to imagine that will lose those two tricks. The purpose of Keycard Blackwood is not to explore for slam, but to double check that you are not missing two keycards (or one keycard and the trump queen) once you have decided that your side has the values for slam.

Do not use keycard if you may lose the first two tricks in a side suit. In that case, you would usually control bid if possible to see if partner has a control in the problem suit.

There may be some players who learned Blackwood with just aces, but Keycard Blackwood is MUCH better and you should switch if you haven't already. Most players are referring to Keycard when they talk about Blackwood.

Before we use Keycard Blackwood, we must have suit agreement. If you don't have a suit in mind, there aren't 5 keycards and there's no trump queen. Be sure that you and partner are both aware of which suit is trump before attempting to use keycard.

Let's look at the responses to Keycard. We'll discuss 1430 Keycard though some players use 3014 which inverts the meaning of 5 and 5:

5: 1 OR 4 Keycards

5: 3 OR 0 Keycards

5: 2 Keycards without the Q of trump

5: 2 Keycards with the Q of trump

For 5/5 responses, we will almost always know whether partner has the higher or lower number based on the auction. If it might be unclear go low -- with the higher number, partner should bid again.

A few important (and not so important notes):

1) After the response, bidding the agreed upon suit on the 5-level says that your side is missing 2 Keycards or 1 and the queen.

2) Over a 5/5 response, the 4NT bidder can ask about the queen by bidding the next highest suit (5 after 5 or 5 after 5) assuming the next highest suit is not the trump suit. The responder repeats the trump suit on the lowest level to deny the queen or bids their lowest ranking king with the queen (or jumps to 6 of our suit without a king).

3) If we have all of the keycards and the trump queen, we can bid 5NT. This bid is looking for kings (I like to bid my kings up the line), but the other hand can jump to 7 with extra values/tricks as well.

4) Voids-- I recommend you simply ignore voids in your response to Keycard Blackwood. They can be useful, but a void is not the same as an ace. Advanced players can make agreements, but I recommend this approach to 99% of my students.

5) 5 keycards-- technically with 5 keycards, you bid hearts or spades (with or without the queen). This never comes up.

Let's end with a review.

What would you do with each of the following hands:

A)

West	North	East	South
			1
Pass	3	Pass	?

KQ8432
AKQ2
K2
3
?

B)

AK9865
4
A98
KQ2

C)

WEST	NORTH	EAST	SOUTH
			1
Pass	3	Pass	?

K10932
A2
Q2
AKQJ
?

Answers:

A) 4NT. We aren't missing two winners in any suit and only care about whether partner has two keycards (partner wouldn't make a limit raise with three aces).

B) 4. We need to set trump (we need to know about the Q). This is a Texas Transfer. Usually we use a Texas Transfer to get to the 4-level and play there, but it is also how we set trump to later use Keycard which is our goal there.

C) 4. Yes, we might belong in slam, but we might also be missing the AK. We control bid 4 and if partner bids 4, we can Keycard over that. If partner bids 4 or 4, we'd content ourselves with game.