The Art of Declaring Series - Creativity in 1NT

For many improving and intermediate players, 1NT is their least favorite contract. When they play this contract, they feel “out of control” and find it both difficult and frustrating (some even say it’s scary!).

To declare a hand in 1NT well, mindset is important.  In many contracts there is little time for flexibility. In a contract like 4♠, if we lose the first two or three tricks then we are left with fewer options for how to play the hand – for example, we cannot give up the lead very many times. By contrast, in a 1NT contract we expect the play to be a ping-pong match of tricks, back and forth between us and the opponents. We gain the lead when they lead a suit and then they gain the lead when we attack a suit of our own. There should be many “back and forth" exchanges when we play 1NT. This can be a challenge for some players to deal with.

How do experienced players learn to fall in love with declaring 1NT?

Mindset is Important

When we declare in 1NT, we need to be tough. We know that we are not going to be completely in control of the hand. We must embrace this fact and even learn to enjoy what can sometimes feel like walking on a tightrope with no net. In order to best accomplish this, it pays to have fun playing this contract. Remember all of bridge is supposed to be fun!

I find that when playing 1NT, asking yourself, “what good things could happen?” (or “what cool/fun things can happen?”) is a great way to get yourself into the right mindset. A big part of playing 1NT for the most tricks possible is creativity. That means not playing scared, because when you are scared it is difficult to engage the creative parts of your brain. Play confidently, play optimistically, and play with a mindset of “Let’s see what I can make happen.” This is a great way to open your mind and see what kind of creative plays you can find.

Playing with Confidence

It is all nice for me to say to you to play with confidence. But what does that mean? I don’t mean the way you sit in your chair (though that can matter). What I mean is reflected in some of your choices during the play.

Example 1

Let’s say you are playing 1NT and you have a holding like this (with spades having never been played):

And let’s say you are in dummy for the last time (you have no more entries here, which will often happen when you open 1NT and it goes all Pass). Should you lead a spade towards your ♠K? 

If you do, you are completely banking on the ♠A being onside. But there is very little reason to make this play now. The opponents have a 9-card ♠ fit. Someone is going to be forced to lead a spade at some point during the play of 1NT – likely many times. If the ♠A is with our RHO, then we can win our natural spade trick then. But if the ♠A is with our LHO, then by not leading this suit, we give our opponents a chance to lay it down or underlead it and give us a trick!

When you get to a position like this, trust that you will get your ♠K eventually, if you are entitled to it. This is a choice in the play that requires confidence! See if you can find these kinds of plays.

Creativity – Get the Opponents to Help You

Some parts of bridge are a science (like the algorithm for how to respond to certain bids, such as 1430 Keycard), while other parts of the game are an art form (like opening leads or hand re-evaluation). Part of being good at playing the hand in a 1NT contract is to look for ways to be creative.

One of the things I concentrate on most is not “How can I earn tricks?”, but “How can I get the Opponents to give me tricks (or help make things easier for me)? Some of that is just good technique.

Example 2

Let’s say you are playing 1NT and you have a holding like this,

In this case, it is best for us not to lead this suit. If we lead the suit there is a good chance that we will win no tricks in it, but if we sit back and let them lead the suit for us, then we can play second hand low and be guaranteed a third-round winner in this suit.

Learning to recognize which suit to attack and which suit to get the opponents to attack is step one. The next step is figuring out how to convince them to lead the suit. This may be be done in a variety of ways, but before you can get that, you must learn to recognize when to attack a suit and when to “hope” they attack a suit for you.

Example 3 – Finesses are still not our friend

Let’s say this is the diamond suit,

Then we can lead a diamond from the dummy, towards our Ace-Queen, and take a finesse. But it is often better to try to get the opponents to lead this suit for you. If RHO leads it, it will be just like taking the finesse (no worse), but if we can get LHO to lead this suit, then we will have two tricks no matter the layout.

The final act of creativity that I must mention is deception. This is some of the most fun parts of the play of a hand of bridge. And playing in 1NT gives us a lot of opportunities to be creative and try these kinds of plays.

Example 4 – Tricky, Tricky

Let’s say you have this position in a 1NT contract. You are in dummy early in the play (we are ignoring the hearts and spades for the moment, let’s say there is nothing much interesting going on there and that you have good holdings in those suits).

It might be tempting to lead a ♣ towards your ♣K. But if this loses, the opponents will take a lot of tricks in clubs and then will likely switch to attacking diamonds (and will take a lot of tricks there). We would prefer for our LHO to lead a club for us. 

A creative way to make that happen is to lead a low diamond from the dummy to your ♦J. This will surely lose to the ♦Q, ♦K, or ♦A. But remember, the opponents cannot see your hand. They will think you are taking some sort of diamond finesse (for example, if you have ♦AJTx, ♦KJxx). They will not want to lead this suit. Instead, they will look at dummy and shift to its weakest suit, clubs, exactly the suit you wanted them to lead.

Sometimes playing a weak suit can keep the opponents away from that suit and can get them to attack the suit you wanted them to all along!

Remember

1NT is a challenging contract to play. But hopefully, this confident and creative approach to playing 1NT will allow you to take more tricks and, even more importantly, enjoy the process of doing so.

Read the previous article in this series here.

About the Author

Robert Todd is a professional player and teacher who you’ll find all over North America (and the world). He's the founder of Adventures in Bridge and you'll find him hosting events, either virtual or in-person, almost every week of the year! Robert's also the president of the ACBL Educational Foundation where he's working to build an institution to shepherd the long term good of bridge!