Seven Notrump

In which some people who play bridge blog about it.

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

The infamous Gerber

I set the lonely burden of this blog down for a while, sorry; I'd rather have it be more of a dialogue, with comments and contributions from you all, rather than me ranting about whatever crosses my mind. Perhaps that makes me a lousy blogger.

But anyway, the Gerber convention keeps coming up, so here it is. Blackwood, as you recall, is used after the partnership has found a trump fit. If the fit you've found is no-trump, Blackwood's 4NT will confuse the matter, so Gerber is used instead. It's quite similar: the asker bids 4C to ask for aces. Responses are:


4D: zero or four aces
4H: one ace
4S: two aces
4NT: three aces

If that satisfies the asker that the partnership has all the aces it will need for slam, 5C asks for kings. I don't believe there's any Roman Keycard Gerber in no-trump auctions. Gerber is on the cheat sheet.

2 comments:

  At Friday, December 22, 2006 8:49:00 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said:

Howdy do Paul? Saw this in the paper yesterday, and thought it was a great example of "no trump" play... A little guesswork, a little bravado, but masterfully orchestrated in a seemingly hopeless situation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/21/crosswords/bridge/21card.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

  At Friday, December 22, 2006 12:07:00 PM, Blogger Paul said:

Wow. I'd love to bring my odds-calculating and endplaying skills to half that level. Using an educated guess about West's club strength to milk East's hearts ... very very nice play.

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