Spiral Asking Bids



Spiral asking bids are used to ask/show a specific king after determing the number of aces in partner's hand

An advanced, but efficient, way is to use spiral asking bids. You rank all the remaining honour cards (except the 4 or 5 aces) in a predefined sequence, and assign each of these honour cards to a corresponding asking bid, starting with lowest available bid to lowest ranked honour. Then the answer sequence goes:

1st step - no, I don't have the card you're asking for 2nd step - yes, I have the card, but I do not have the next one 3rd step - yes, I have the two first cards, but not the third one etc.

Using RKCB Blackwood the normal way of ranking the 15 remaining honour cards are:
1 - Q of trumph (if not already shown)
2 - K of partners longest suit (lowest if none shown)
3 - K of partners second longest suit (second lowest)
4 - K of partners shortest suit (highest)
5 - Q of partners longest suit (lowest if none shown)
etc.
With
Kxxxxx
AQxxx
A

(as an extreme example) after 1S-(3c)-4S-(P) the bidding would continue:
4NT RKCB
--5D 1 ace
5H Spiral for QS, KC, KD, KH, ..
--5NT QS, no KC
6D Spiral for KH, QC, QD, QH, ..
--6S KH, no QC
7S/7NT

PS: using RKCB with spiral asking bids is a _big_ advantage if you can start the the RKCB low. Cuebidding is really much overused and only relevant if you lack _exactly_ one ace. Far better to reserve the lowest cuebid as RKCB.