When you and your partner sit down to play in a club or tournament game, you’re expected to fill out a convention card. This lists all the bidding and defensive carding agreements of the partnership.

The card is theoretically for the benefit of your opponents. When you sit down to play against another pair, they are likely to be unfamiliar with all the methods you are using. It would be a waste of time to have to explain all your agreements each time you sit down. Most items won’t come up during the couple of hands you play against this pair. So . . . the convention card. The opponents can look at it any time if they want to know about your system. They can also ask questions if anything is unclear.

Filling out the card, however, is usually beneficial to your partnership. You have to know exactly what your agreements are and this can lead to some interesting discussions. You might find the partnership is on different wavelengths about some bids. Time to straighten things out.

The standard convention card contains room for all the permitted conventions and this can be intimidating to anyone when starting out at duplicate bridge. Shown above, for example, is just the area for opening notrump bids. Scary, isn’t it?

Don’t Panic!

The first thing to realize is that 90% of what’s on the card probably doesn’t apply to your partnership. You only need to fill in the few agreements you do have; you can ignore everything else. Once you’ve done it for the first time, it will be a lot easier in the future. Besides, you can keep the same convention card for future games with the same partner! Nonetheless, let’s walk through this section of the card and answer any questions you might have.

What Do the Colors Mean?

The card is color-coded. The majority is in black but some parts are in red or blue (grey here). The items in black indicate “standard” methods which don’t require any special notification to the opponents. The items in red indicate nonstandard agreements that require you to alert your opponents if they come up. More on that later. The items in blue (grey) are somewhere in between. They are fairly standard agreements but you have to announce them to your opponents when they apply. Let’s see how it all works.

How Do I Show the Range of the 1NT Opening?

The first thing to fill in is your point range for an opening bid of 1NT. A popular range is 15-17 points but you might use 16-18 or play a weak notrump style of 12-14.

Would you open 1NT with this hand? There are only 14 high-card points but you can add a point for the five-card suit, or you might upgrade the hand because of the three tens. Although this section doesn’t indicate that the range is stated in terms of high-card points, most players assume that is the case. To be on the safe side, you can indicate the range as 14+ to 17, to let the opponents know that you occasionally open 1NT with as few as 14 high-card points when you have “something extra.”

Why are there two lines for the notrump range? Some partnerships vary the range of their 1NT opening according to vulnerability or position at the table. Since that doesn’t apply to your partnership, ignore this line. Notice the range is in blue (grey), indicating you must announce it. When partner opens 1NT, you simply state “14 plus to 17.” That’s it.