Deal Recipes for 1NT Natural Bidding
Tutorial
This is one of several user guides on specific topics. The directory for all user guides is here.
Update on 2 June, 2025: This post was written before the deal generator user interface was substantially reworked. However, the information it contains on recipe construction is still useful. This post may be deleted once a more complete set of recipe cookbooks is built.
This deal-generating tutorial is based on the “Responses to 1NT” section of the Chapter 3 summary of the book, Bidding in the 21st Century, that is part of the ACBL Bridge Series. I intend these deals for natural bidding, but of course you can use whatever system you prefer.
The chapter summary gives us 11 response scenarios. There can be many deals for each scenario. I will show you how to build one deal recipe for each; you can make others that suit you.
You may choose the dealer and vulnerability that suits you. I often start with North as dealer and nobody vulnerable since that is easy to visualize, and you play South in many bridge-playing programs. You can vary the dealer and vulnerability using features explained in other tutorials.
Scenario #1: Opener has a balanced hand and 15-17 HCP. Responder has 0-7 points and no 5+ card suits.
All you need is this Shaper. I made North balanced with 15-17 HCP. Responder gets 0-7 HCP and a shape of “No 5 Plus”.
I gave East very low HCP to discourage overcalls. I do this for deals intended for an instructional setting; when making “real” deals you would let both East and West have 0-37 HCP.
Click the “Generate Deal = Shaper” button at the top of the Shaper panel. I get this deal:
You might want to save a shaper to a file so you can reload it and use it again later. To do so, key a meaningful name in the filename in the File Saver panel in the lower left of the screen, and click the Shaper button in that panel. Here you can see my result from doing that, with the saved file name displayed in the upper right (your browser might show the resulting saved file in some other way):
Scenario #2: Opener has a balanced hand and 15-17 HCP. Responder has 0-7 points and 5+ clubs.
It’s easy to give clubs at least 5 cards just by keying “XXXXX” in the suit in the Recipe panel. But the point of this scenario is for clubs to be longer than any major suit. To do that, also use the “Clubs Longest” shape for South.
This time, since we’re also using the Recipe panel, click the red button at the top of the Recipe panel. That button makes the generator use both the shape and the recipe.
Now that we have involved the Recipe panel, it is better to save your setups as a recipe file instead of, or in addition to, saving them as shapers. When you save a recipe to a file, it always includes whatever is in the shaper panel, too.
Scenario #3: Opener has a balanced hand and 15-17 HCP. Responder has 0-7 points and 5+ diamonds.
Same as the previous scenario, but with 5+ diamonds instead of 5+ clubs. Start with the same shaper, but select “Diamonds Longest” for South.
In the Recipe panel, click the club/diamond swap button to move the five exes to South’s diamonds suit:
Click the red button of the Recipe panel. Here’s a deal:
Scenario #4: Opener has a balanced hand and 15-17 HCP. Responder has 0-7 points and 5+ hearts.
Looks familiar, just need a long heart suit. Change South’s shape to “Hearts Longest”.
Click the diamond/heart swap button of the Recipe panel:
Then click the red button of the Recipe panel. I won’t show you the resulting deal—I hope you are following along with the deal generator in another browser window, and you can try it yourself.
Are you saving these recipes to files as we go along? I am. These scenarios come up a lot.
Scenario #5: Opener has a balanced hand and 15-17 HCP. Responder has 0-7 points and 5+ spades suit.
Still same as before, but now with long spades. Change South’s shape to “Spades Longest”.
Click the spade/heart swap button of the Recipe panel:
And generate the deal from the Recipe panel.
Scenario #6: Opener has a balanced hand and 15-17 HCP. Responder has 8-9 points.
Finally, a different point range for responder. The goal of this scenario is for responder to bid 2NT after a 1NT opening bid.
With 8-9 HCP (and with us not knowing Stayman or Jacoby Transfers if we are going by Chapter 3 of Bidding in the 21st Century), we only care about the points, not the card distribution. So we revert to a shape of “Any” for responder’s hand, and we blank out the Recipe panel. In fact, you could generate this one with the red button of the Shaper panel, ignoring the Recipe panel completely. But it’s good form to blank out the recipe when you’re not using it, to make sure you don’t think you are using it, or that you don’t accidentally invoke unwanted card distributions should you happen to generate from the red button of the Recipe panel.
There’s a secret shortcut to clear out a recipe. Just click on the Spades icon for a hand to clear out all placeholders in that hand. To quickly clear out just one suit of a hand in the recipe panel, double click the text box for that suit.
Scenario #7: Opener has a balanced hand and 15-17 HCP. Responder has 10-15 points and 6+ hearts.
Training wheels off. In the shaper, I’m letting East have 0-37 HCP. Since North/South will have a minimum of a combined 25 HCP, East is not likely to overcall—but it could happen if East gets all 15 of the remaining points.
I set South’s shape to “Hearts Longest” as I did before for a 5+ card suit. This time, though, I key “XXXXXX” in South’s hearts in the recipe panel to make sure South gets at least six hearts. Hearts are guaranteed to be the longest suit, so no other suit will tempt us to bid.
Scenario #8: Opener has a balanced hand and 15-17 HCP. Responder has 10-15 points and 6+ spades.
In the shaper, change South’s shape to “Spades Longest”.
Click the spade/heart swap button of the Recipe panel to move the six-card suit to spades.
Scenario #9: Opener has a balanced hand and 15-17 HCP. Responder has 10-15 points and 5 hearts.
In the shaper, change South’s shape to “Hearts Longest”.
In the recipe panel, clear out South’s spades suit and key “XXXXXB” in South’s hearts. The “B” after the “X” placeholders limits the length of the suit to however many placeholders were keyed, so you will get exactly 5 hearts.
Scenario #10: Opener has a balanced hand and 15-17 HCP. Responder has 10-15 points and 5 spades.
In the shaper, change South’s shape to “Spades Longest”.
Click the spades/hearts swap button of the recipe panel to move the “XXXXXB” from hearts to spades in South.
Scenario #11: Opener has a balanced hand and 15-17 HCP. Responder has 10-15 points and no 5+ card major suits.
In the Shaper, changes South’s shape to “No 5 Major”.
In the recipe panel, clear the placeholders from South’s spades suit.
There you have it—all 11 scenarios from the Chapter 3 summary. If you have saved off files of shapers or recipes (or both, as I do), then you have a reusable set of configurations that you can add to your library.
