Montreal Relay - Baby Blackwood

A MODIFIED MONTREAL RELAY
Baby Blackwood - 3NT

3NT is Blackwood I don't much like the name, but then, I didn't invent it, either. Baby Blackwood is an old convention that not many players use today, but it can save you a lot of grief if you adopt it. Like all conventions you have to weigh what you give up when you substitute one natural bid for another. In this case you use 3NT as Blackwood only after an agreement on either hearts or spades as the trump suit. That means you can seldom play three notrump as a contract when both of you know you have game in a major. That doesn't seem like a big loss to me.

Any Form of Blackwood
You can use any flavor of Blackwood you like, too. If you prefer the original form invented by Easley Blackwood or the popular 1430 or 1340 Roman Keycard versions you should still consider this agreement. (I recommend Major Suit Keycard, though.)

The most important thing to remember is that a bid of 3NT asks for aces after the partnership has agreed on either hearts or spades as the trump suit. My partners and I also have an implicit understanding that an immediate response of 3NT to a major suit opening is an agreement on that suit as trump and starts a Keycard Asking sequence. A lot of times when you are certain of game but not too sure of a slam you can use Baby Blackwood freely because if your partner's answer shows too few keycards you can stop safely at the four level. That sure beats using 4NT and having to sign off at the 5-level.

3NT is Blackwood only after an agreement on a major suit as trump.

This is the best example I can show you for using this agreement:

Suppose your partner shows you a limit raise with 4-card support and you have opened 1

with this hand... Are you interested in a possible slam?

	A Q J 7 4
	K 9
	K Q J 3 2
	8

Your partner might hold either of these two hands, and you will go down one if you venture a 4NT call and partner has the first hand. But you will make seven with the second hand if you don't get a club lead. Baby Blackwood solves this problem.

	Hand 1		Hand 2
	K 8 5 3		K 8 5 3
	Q J 7 3		A 8 7 3

	T 9		A 9
	K Q 5		7 6 5