Ken Allan Bridge Table

The Mini Notrump

Opening 1NT with 10-12 points is dangerous but it is a good tactical bid, at once preemptive and constructive. A dozen Kingston players have been playing this notrump range within a forcing club structure for nearly 20 years; some Ottawa players have played the 10-12 notrump within a standard structure for almost as long. All of us get questions from time to time on playing a very weak notrump.

The preemptive advantage of opening 1NT is obvious. 1NT takes away a whole level of bidding. If you are not playing the 10-12 NT, one of the most common auctions after you pass (with 10-12 balanced) is for LHO to open a minor, RHO to bid a major and LHO to bid 1NT. They have started to develop a picture of each other’s hand and whether they stop there or go on they are well placed to judge their best spot. You prevent that comfortable sequence when you open a 10-12 NT.

Another advantage of a natural NT as a preempt is that the opponents have no cue bid for strong, awkward, forward-going hands.

The constructive value of a 10-12 NT is less apparent, but when you pass such hands (especially in first seat), you often find yourself playing catch-up later in the auction, trying to show how good you are to a partner who opened in third seat and may be fooling around. The result is that you are frequently either too high or too low.

Opening with a mini notrump (in first and second seat) increases bidding accuracy when your side holds the balance of the power and it takes the sting out of preempts by LHO. In competitive auctions, your immediate definition of shape and count makes it easier for partner to judge how high is safe and when it is better to double for penalties.

Dangers

There is no doubt that opening a very weak notrump leaves you open to an occasional minus 1100; and if such a score spoils your whole day then you had better stick to strong notrump. What most of us who play the 10-12 NT have found is that the big penalties are less frequent than one would think. It is not unusual to go through a Regional without a big penalty as a direct result of the weak notrump. Over the same period there are usually one or two big gains and quite a few small ones.

The key to minimizing the number of big penalties is to have firm understandings on escape sequences when 1NT gets doubled. Two of the most common are:

Systems On: After a double, play that all of your normal conventional bids like Stayman and Transfers still apply. If you have a long minor, redouble, forcing to 2 and then pass with clubs or convert to 2 with diamonds. There are two ways, after double, to treat a pass by responder:

1. the simplest is just to play that you don’t think there is a better spot;
2. more complicated, but much more common, is to play that pass is forcing to a redouble—you will leave the redouble in with a good hand and start bidding suits up the line with a weak balanced hand or three suited hand.

Brozel Escapes: This convention caters to more hand types than the above. Rebouble shows a single-suited hand and is forcing to 2. All immediate bids (at the 2-level or 3-level) are Brozel-type two suiters. Pass is forcing to a redouble as in (2) above.

Fitting the Mini NT into your system

Having decided to take a walk on the wild side and open 1NT with 10-12 HCP, there is a problem: you are going to have to figure out how to bid balanced hands with 13+ HCP. 

At present, if you play a strong notrump, you open 1NT with 15-17 HCP, and with 12-14 balanced you probably bid your better minor and then rebid 1NT. A change to a weak NT opening bid of 12-14 HCP is easy; for the 15-17 balanced hands you open better minor and rebid 1NT—just switching the meanings of the two sequences.

In either case you show 18-19 HCP by opening better minor and rebidding 2NT; and you are presently passing with 10-11 balanced (if you play a strong notrump you may be passing 12 balanced as well). When you move 2 points down into passing territory by opening 1NT with 10-12 balanced, the range expands between 1NT and the 2NT rebid. You will have to find some way to describe balanced hands from 13 to 17 — too wide a range to be described by opening your better minor and then rebidding 1NT.

The solution, when using a mini NT within a Standard American framework, is to differentiate between the 1 and 1 opening bids.  There is room for some creativity here. One of the simplest solutions would be to agree that an opening bid of 1 shows: a normal club opener; or, 13-14 HCP balanced (rebid 1NT); or, 17-18 HCP balanced (rebid 2NT). Then, filling in the spaces, an opening bid of 1 shows: a normal diamond opener; or, 15-16 HCP balanced (rebid 1NT); or, 19 HCP balanced (rebid 2NT). This is similar to, but not quite the same as, the structure used by Wayne Perrin and his partners in Ottawa.

The mini NT fits a little more easily into a forcing club structure. In Goren’s version of Precision, an opening 1NT is 13-15 HCP and you are supposed to pass with a balanced 12 or less. According to Goren, an opening bid of 1 promises 11-15 HCP, at least 4 diamonds and an unbalanced hand. However, those of us who were attracted to the weak opening bids of Precision soon found it very difficult to pass those fine 12 point balanced hands.

There were two solutions. One was to stretch 1NT to 12-15 HCP (this is what we did for many years). The other would be to open 1 and then rebid 1NT; this means that the 1 bid becomes a two way bid—either the Goren 1 or a balanced 12 HCP (and in the latter case the diamonds could be as short as two). It seems to me that making 1 ambiguous in order to accomodate 12 HCP balanced hands is inefficient, but of course anyone who adopts this method is soon using the sequence for balanced 11’s and an occasional nice 10.

You can see where I am going with this. By reversing the 1 and 1NT opening bids it is fairly easy to parachute a 10-12 NT into a Precision structure. 1 becomes a two way bid—either the Goren 1 described above or a 13-15 NT (in which case the diamond suit could be as short as two).

In order to straighten out the ambiguity in the 1 bid as quickly as possible, we make a NT rebid at first opportunity when holding the 13-15 balanced hand. The exception is that we raise partner with four card support.

Note that after 1 by you and 1 by partner, 1 by you shows an unbalanced hand with 4+ cards in both diamonds and spades. If you have opened 1 with 13-15 balanced and partner responds with 1, you therefore bypass a 4-card spade suit to bid 1NT. On this auction we use 2 over the 1NT bid as Checkback Stayman to ask for four spades or three hearts in that order. Note that after 1 – 1, 1NT we play that 2 (checkback) asks first for four hearts and then three spades.

When we started playing the 10-12 NT, we did it only non-vulnerable. We soon decided it worked so well, and we got caught so seldom, we might as well use it at all vulnerabilities. We do chicken out in 3rd and 4th seat. Once partner has passed (usually 9 HCP or less), bidding 1NT with 10 HCP is much more risky. So we beef up our 3rd and 4th seat 1NT openers to 12-15 HCP and make our 1 bids honest again (that is, the Goren 1 as described above).

Balanced Hands with 10-19 HCP

Note that the Precision auction 1 – 1, 1 NT shows 16 to 19 balanced.  This is an awkward range but it is not affected in any way by the mini NT.

Defending Against the 10 to 12 Notrump

It is tempting, when confronted with the mini NT, to respond in kind and compete with weak hands. This was my first reaction but I have come to believe it a mistake.

There are two reasons:

1. It’s dangerous—when your RHO opens 1NT and you have a weak hand, half the high cards are unaccounted for and LHO will have more than your partner roughly half the time (more than half if your partner is a passed hand).
2. Constructive bidding is much more important over a 10-12 NT than it is over a strong notrump.

Competitive bidding over a strong notrump is geared to finding a good partscore or a sacrifice; games are very unlikely—hence you can bid over a strong notrump with a light distributional hand and partner will not jump to the moon. After a 10-12 NT, game is a lively possibility so you and your partner need to be able to bid constructively.  You are starting at the 2-level — your bids should be sound and they can’t have too wide a range.

I suggest that you keep the methods you use for competing against strong notrump; just make the bids more constructive. For example, if you play Brozel then a bid of 2 directly over a 10-12 NT would still show clubs and hearts but would promise an opening bid. Partner responds accordingly — 2NT invites game in NT, 3 and 3 show fit with invitational values (over a strong NT, for most of us, these raises would be preemptive). The only change in Brozel for the 10-12 NT is that the double shows either a balanced hand with 13+ HCP or any other opening bid not covered by the suit bids. In fact, no matter what convention you play over their notrump, the double should be changed to have this meaning over the 10-12 NT.

When Partner Doubles

There is one bidding sequence which comes up fairly often and is the one where partners are most often on different wavelengths: LHO opens a 10-12 NT, your partner doubles, RHO passes and this is alerted as a forcing pass, ie. the 1NT opener is expected to redouble (providing you pass). If you ask further you will find that after the redouble, RHO will pass with a good hand and run with a weak hand. If you pass in this situation, you will get another chance to bid so you and your partner need to agree on the difference between an immediate bid and a pass followed by a bid at your next opportunity. In particular you need to agree on which bids show strength and which bids show weakness. And don’t assume that what is crystal clear to you is going to be the same to your partner.

The general principle governing this situation is that if you and your partner have the balance of strength then your best result may be a penalty double and you can only leave this possibility open by passing. So the general rule is: you pass with strength and bid with weakness. But you probably want to allow certain exceptions.

For example, should a pass by you be an absolute promise of strength (say 8+ HCP)? Or, in addition to the strong hands, would you also pass with certain weak hands? My preference is for the latter—if I have a weak hand and an obvious place to play, I bid immediately; otherwise I pass, both with strong hands and with weak hands which are flat or multi-suited (if the redouble comes back to me and I now take a bid, partner assumes I am weak and flat and bids accordingly). The only good hands with which I bid immediately are distributional hands with a long strong suit. In this case, I might jump directly to game or jump to the 3-level to invite game.

Suppose the bidding starts 1NT—double—pass—pass,  redouble—pass—suit bid; to recapitulate, your partner doubled the mini NT, you passed with strength, the notrumper redoubled and her partner on your right started an escape sequence with a suit bid. A double by you would be for penalties but if RHO has bid your small doubleton, that is not attractive. If you pass, partner will get another chance to bid but a pass by you would imply that your original pass showed weakness and you don’t want to say that. So pass is not an option. A bid by you shows strength as well as a hand unsuited for a penalty double, but the question remains, should your bid be forcing or just constructive?

One of the main difficulties in bidding strong hands after a notrump opener is that you don’t have a cue bid to announce strength. Now that they have started an escape sequence there is a cue bid available and it should show a hand, either flat or multi-suited, which is not suitable for a penalty double but is strong enough for game. I recommend that a minimum bid by you be constructive but not forcing and that jump bids (below game) be forcing.

Exploiting Their Weakness

In order to accomodate the 10-12 NT, the opening bid of 1 (and also a standard 1) is ambiguous, showing either an ordinary 1 opener or a notrump hand. This gets resolved on the rebid so in an uncontested auction it is not a problem for them. In competitive auctions there may not be room to clarify. Hence, you should go out of your way to compete over their 1 .

Consider the auction 1 —1—pass—2. The mini-notrumper has opened 1 and your partner stretched to overcall 1; RHO passed and you now stretch (with a fit but perhaps with as few as 4 HCP) to bid 2. This is my favourite auction against the mini-notrumpers because the partner of the 1 opener will find it more difficult to decide whether to compete than would a Standard partnership in the same situation (in standard, opener’s 1 shows diamonds equal to, or better than, his clubs, whereas a mini-notrumper could open 1 with two diamonds and five clubs).

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