Page 86 - Learn Bridge Ver2_Neat

As in real language, these bidding languages evolve over time and if
you meet people that say that they too play Acol you should be aware that
their variant could be a different dialect to yours.
Later in your bridge career you listen to other peoples ideas and maybe
adapt some of them to fit into your system, however, for the moment,
listen only to us else you could become very confused and introduce
inconsistencies into your game.
We are now at the time to learn your first bit of real bidding with -

The opening bid of 1NT.

When you pick up your hand you should first try to assess whether or
not it fits into the opening 1NT category. This is very important and will
save you a lot of heartache later and you must do it on every hand that you
bid forever. If the hand suits a 1NT opening bid open 1NT.

An opening bid of 1NT has between 12 and 14 points. It must also be
a balanced hand, that is, it must be -
< 4-3-3-3;
< 4-4-3-2;
< 5-3-3-2 with a 5 card minor;
< 5-3-3-2 with a 5 card major so long as the suit is poor.

To open 1NT you are promising partner that

you have 12-14 points and a balanced hand.

Because this bid describes the hand so tightly it is called a “limited
opening bid” and puts partner in charge for the rest of the auction.

We now need to look at the partner of the opening bidder and see
what should be done. We will only cover some of this today.

Responding to a 1NT opening bid with a balanced hand.

The first thing to ask yourself is might there be a game available with

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