This chapter covers our slam-bidding tools: Roman Keycard Blackwood and its variants, cue-bidding style, and the non-serious slam try. These are the methods we reach for once a fit is set and one side is interested in twelve or thirteen tricks.
We play RKC in the 1430 style. In this style the first step shows one or four keycards and the second step shows zero or three. A keycard is one of the four aces or the king of the agreed trump suit, so there are five keycards in all.
We use "Redwood" to keep the ask low when the agreed suit is a minor. With a minor agreed, the ask is the bid one step above four of that suit (4♦ asks with ♣ agreed, 4♥ asks with ♦ agreed). With a major agreed, 4NT is the ask.
5♣ 1 or 4 keycards 5♦ 0 or 3 keycards 5♥ 2 keycards, without the trump queen 5♠ 2 keycards, with the trump queen
Inside our relay auctions (the TaJ structure) we use optional keycard: once the relays have run their course, the next step up can be taken as a keycard ask rather than a natural bid. This is the method we use in those sequences.
Exclusion is the one place we depart from 1430. Exclusion keycard responses are always 0314, meaning the first step shows zero or three and the second step shows one or four.
When one of us opens a weak two or another preempt and the other jumps to 4♣ as a keycard ask, the responses are compressed because a preempting hand cannot hold two keycards plus the queen.
4♦ 0 keycards 4♥ 1 keycard, without the trump queen 4♠ 1 keycard, with the trump queen 4NT 2 keycards
We have no firm agreement for showing a void over 4NT RKC. Several schemes exist and none is clearly best, so this is an open item.
Most of our cue-bids are loose about whether they show strictly a first-round control or either a first- or second-round control. When a very strong hand is cue-bidding, assume it is a first-round control. When a weaker hand cue-bids, it can be either.
In many auctions 3NT is non-serious, showing extra values but no strong slam ambition, and over it all cue-bids are the first-or-second-round style. We use only 3NT for this purpose, never any other bid.
Tom has raised playing a non-serious 3♠ as well, but Ari does not play it, so whether we adopt it is still unresolved between us.