[Echognome]

There has been some discussion on how to ask for the Queen of trumps and side Kings after you have bid RKCB. I want to offer one such method along with a couple of variations. At first this may sound like it is very complicated, but it is really just a matter of staying in tune with a list. I personally think it is as accurate as any specific King ask and doesn't require opener to ask unnecessary questions.

First off, let me present the list:

1. The Queen of trumps (if unknown)
2. The lowest side suit King
3. The middle side suit King
4. The highest side suit King
5. The lowest side suit Queen*
6. The middle side suit Queen*
7. The highest side suit Queen*
8. The jack of trumps

*Some may want to agree that showing third round control is sufficient, so that xx would be ok.

I will also note that relay players may want to reverse the order of suits to High - Middle - Low if they prefer. Whatever works for your memory.

Another note is that if the responder to keycard ask has already shown shortness, then that suit is skipped in both the asking structure and responding structure. So if the auction went, for example: 1♠ - 4♣; 4NT - Answer; then the club suit is no longer considered to be of interest and you will only be asking about the Ks and Qs of the diamonds and hearts.

Now I want to make a short discussion of what I view as the difference between spiral scanning and denial cuebidding. If you don't understand this, don't worry about it. It is just for those that do practice relay so that we can agree on terminology. In my view, spiral scanning is useful if you've agreed a suit. Thus, you are forcing to a certain denomination. If we have keycarded, we are always forcing to the next level of the trump suit. In denial cuebidding, it is typically the case that the strain is unknown. Thus the asker must bid the next step asking questions to which they may already know the answer. This has some efficiencies, but may be better overall because you do not have to use space to agree a suit.

So back to spiral scanning. We have set trumps and have keycarded. Now we want to find out more. So the first thing we must do is decide which question we want to ask.

If we want to know about the trump queen, we bid the cheapest non-trump denomination.

Example: 1♠ - 3♠; 4NT - 5♣; 5♦ asks about the trump queen. Suppose now that we are not interested in the trump queen, because we hold it ourselves. Then we may bid 1♠ - 3♠; 4NT - 5♣; 5♥ which asks about the King of clubs. If we hold both the trump queen and the king of clubs, we can ask about the king of diamonds by bidding the next step along. However, since 5H is our trump suit, we want that available as a sign-off. So we we bid 1♠ - 3♠; 4NT - 5♣; 5NT to ask about the diamond K.

In summary, with my example sequence of 1♠ - 3♠; 4NT - 5♣; ? we have:

5♦ Asks for the queen of trumps
5♥ Asks about the king of clubs
5♠ Sign-off (potentially one may go on if they have the higher of the responses)
5NT Asks about the king of diamonds
6♣ Asks about the king of hearts
6♦ Asks about the queen of clubs
6♥ Asks about the queen of diamonds
6♠ Sign-off

Above the slam level, we normally play the bids to mean choice of slams. But I will leave that for partnership agreement.

Now, how do we respond to the asks. We make the next step as our negative response to the question. However, if we have a positive response, we zoom along the list and answer multiple questions. So let's go back to our example sequence:

1♠ - 3♠; 4NT - 5♣; 5♦(queen ask) - ?

5♥ No trump queen
5♠ Trump queen, but no club King
5N Trump queen, club king, but no diamond king
6♣ Trump queen, club king, diamond king, but no heart king
6♦ Trump queen, all side kings, but no club queen
6♥ Trump queen, all side kings, club queen, but no diamond queen
etc.

So now what? The keycard asker has heard some information, but may want to find out more. What we do is simply move down the list. Again, the asker can ask the specific question and responder can then zoom through responses. Back to our example.

1♠ - 3♠; 4NT - 5♣; 5♦ (queen ask) - 5♠ (Q of trumps, but no club king) - ?

5N Do you have the diamond King?
6♣ Do you have the heart King?
6♦ Do you have the club Queen?
6♥ Do you have the diamond Queen?
6♠ Sign-off

And in response to say the first question we have:

6♣ Don't have the diamond King
6♦ Have the diamond King, but not the heart King
6♥ Have the diamond King, the heart King, but not the club queen
etc.

Again, it's up to partnership agreement when you can go beyond 6 of the trump suit.

Let me give two further examples to wrap this up. First, let's suppose that the trump Queen is known from keycard blackwood. So now this is dropped from the list.

1♠ - 3♠; 4NT - 5♥ (2 without the Q); ?

5♠ Sign-off
5N Do you have the king of clubs?
6♣ Do you have the king of diamonds?
6♦ Do you have the king of hearts?
6♥ Do you have the queen of clubs?
6♠ Sign-off

Again, after the response, you can ask again based on just going down the list.

The second example is when responder to keycard has shown shortness.

1♠ - 4♦; 4NT - 5♠ (2 with the Q of trumps); ?

5N Do you have the club King?
6♣ Do you have the heart King? (note diamonds not counted)
6♦ Do you have the club Queen?
6♥ Do you have the heart Queen?
6♠ Sign-off

Finally, you will want to agree what to do if someone doubles either the ask or the response. This actually gives you more room, as you have two additional calls: pass and redouble. If you use pass as the cheapest step, then the next hand can use XX as a step. But again, it's important to agree this with partner.

I hope this may be of some use to people. I think it is at least as good as any specific king ask and really isn't that complicated as long as you both keep in mind the list.

[blackshoe]

Nice post, I like it. I like Spiral Scan, too, and wish I could get my partners to play it.

[matmat]

it's a nice structure. do you adapt it to double fits?

[Echognome]

matmat, on Sep 10 2007, 02:54 PM, said:

it's a nice structure. do you adapt it to double fits?

I am indifferent on this. I think it is just a matter of whether you want to add six ace keycard. You could then spiral both queens without much in way of tweaking. It might clarify some things though as long as you agree on the modified list. If i have time later, I will post some example hands.

[blackshoe]

Romex uses six ace Blackwood. I don't remember how that affects the Spiral Scan in that system. I do know that they make a couple of other modifications:

1. If replier to BW has bid another suit, honors in that suit take precedence over other side suits.
2. If replier has not bid another suit, but asker has, then honors in that suit take precedence.
3. If the prior auction has established that replier cannot have fewer than 2 keycards, then his first or second step response is forcing to small slam, so that asker's bid of 5 of the trump suit is a scan, not a signoff.

[ralph23]

A very nice and thoughtful post. I hope it will encourage others to offer some "mini-treatises" (if that's the word) on similar narrowly defined topics.