Blackwood Part 3

I wasn’t planning to write another blog on Blackwood but then this deal came up while I was watching the European Open Teams today.

Voids don’t work very well when you use any form of Blackwood.  Here is a case in point

You are sitting South with nobody vulnerable and you have

You open 1♠ and partner bids 2♥ , game forcing.  You bid 2♠ and partner splinters with 4♣ .  You cuebid 4♦ and partner cuebids 4♥.  What do you do?

Zia decided to bid Blackwood and partner now bid 5NT which it appears showed two keycards and a void.  This is not what you want to hear.  You are off two keycards.  Hope we aren’t missing two aces…. but alas

Now for those who hate Blackwood in these situations lets look at what happened at the other table with Tessiere and Fantun.

I am not familiar with their methods but taken at face value they seemed to have cuebid their way to slam.  I will try to find out more about it.

Playing the same deal, Fantoni and Nunes started off the same as Zia and Welland but Nunes bid 4S over 4H (which I confess was my choice) and Fantoni passed it out.  (I would have taken another try but perhaps there is something in their methods that helped him make that decision).

So somehow despite long books on control asking and Roman Keycard Blackwood, top players are still having trouble getting to the right slams.  Are there better ways?  Will the future bring us some new tricks?