How to Make 1NT

In this lesson:

Although only seven tricks are needed, three factors result in the fact that playing a 1NT contract is usually more difficult than declaring other partscores.

1. Although you have a lot of losers, you don't have an opportunity to ruff any of them.
2. One player usually has a lot more strength than his partner has, (such as when a 1NT opening is passed out). As a result, you will often have a lack of entries to the weak hand. Taking tricks in notrump when one hand is very weak is a lot more difficult than if your side's assets are fairly even divided.
3. Your side has limited assets. That is why you stopped at the one level. Your side may even have less combined strength than the opponents have. However, as the examples in this lesson will illustrate, there is a silver lining. If declarer plays well, he often can find his way home to take seven tricks.

These real-life deals will illustrate the techniques you can use to sharpen your declarer play and increase YOUR success in outplaying others in 1NT contracts

For each deal in the lesson, Marty will explain exactly how and what you should think about when you are declaring. This includes:

• - How to give yourself an extra chance to make the hand
• - How to overcome bad splits
• - How to take advantage of clues from the opponents' auction
• - What you must know about suit combinations
• - How to avoid losing finesses
• - The right time (and technique) to execute an endplay
• - How to judge when it's right to take a safety play
• - When should you play differently at matchpoints

Here is an example of what Marty will teach:

South deals and opens 1NT. After the lead of the ♠J, how will you play the hand?

Here is the full deal.

You have 5 immediate winners: 3 spades, 1 heart, 1 club. You need to develop two additional tricks.

The correct suit to develop is diamonds. However, the normal line of play of "Use up the honor from the short side first" will not work here. When you lead the diamond queen, East will duck. When he wins the 2nd diamond, you lack the entries to get a 2nd diamond trick, and you'll be limited to 6 tricks.

Fortunately, dummy's three diamond intermediates offer an opportunity for a SURE THING. After winning the first trick with your spade king, do not make the normal, instinctive play of leading the diamond queen. Instead, lead the diamond 5 from your hand and play one of dummy's three intermediate cards. If you win the trick, you'll lead a low diamond from dummy, and will be able to either win your diamond queen or dummy's king.

If East wins the first diamond with the jack, you are still okay. You'll win his spade return with your ace and lead the diamond queen and overtake it with dummy's king. Dummy still has the spade queen entry, so it doesn't matter whether East wins his diamond ace or ducks.

By playing this way, you are GUARANTEED of winning the 2 diamond tricks you needed to make your contract.