1.1 How Good Is This Hand

Understanding how tricks are won at bridge will help you to understand how to evaluate your hand. Tricks are won by high cards, trumps, and long suits. If you have two balanced hands between the partnership, how many HCP (High Card Points, in the traditional 4, 3, 2, 1 method) you and your partner have between you will usually determine how many tricks you have.

Balanced Hand is a technical bridge term. It applies to hands that have no singletons and no more than one doubleton. The possible combinations are 4-3-3-3, 4-4-3-2, and 5-3-3-2. When we evaluate these hands, most of the time we count just our HCP. We open the bidding with almost all balanced hands of 12 HCP or more. If you have 4-3-3-3 distribution, or no Aces, this is reason to subtract a point when evaluating your hand.

Counting HCPs

There is more to counting HCPs than simple arithmetic. The traditional method undervalues Aces and Kings and overvalues Queens and Jacks. High cards in short suits might take no tricks, for example a doubleton QJ will take no tricks if they both fall under the opponents’ Ace and King. Supporting cards such as tens and nines matter. A suit with KQJ109 will take 4 tricks regardless of how the suit divides, while AKQ32 will take from 3 to 5 tricks depending on how many partner has in the suit and how the suit divides. However, HCPs gives the first 6 points and the second 9 points.

There is an excellent program you can use with your browser at:

www.gg.caltech.edu/~jeff/knr.cgi

The Kaplan and Rubens Hand Evaluator, designed by Edgar Kaplan and Jeff Rubens of The Bridge World magazine, allows you to enter a bridge hand and tells you how much it is really worth. The algorithm they use can be found at:

www.gg.caltech.edu/~jeff/knr.txt

When you have a Semi-balanced Hand (5-4-2-2 or 6-3-2-2), a hand with two doubletons, or an Unbalanced Hand with a singleton, the number of tricks you will take will be determined much less by HCPs and more by the quality of your trump fit, and the kinds of controls you have. When we have an unbalanced hand, it is better to use Losers and Quick Tricks to evaluate the hand.

Losing Trick Count

Count one loser for each of the top three cards in each suit that are not the Ace, King, or Queen. There are a maximum of three losers in any suit: three small, four small, five small, etc., are all three losers. The theory is that eventually you will likely be able to set up a trick in your long suit.

Let’s look at some examples:

No Loser Suits	One Loser Suits	Two Loser Suits	Three Loser Suits
AKQ(x)	x	xx	xxx(x)
AK	Ax	Qx	Qxx(x)**
A	Kx	Jx	Jxx(x)
void	AKx(x)	Axx(x)
	KQx(x)	Kxx(x)
	KQ	Q10x(x)*
	AQx(x)
* without the Jack or 10, consider it 3 losers
** without the Jack or 10

Some Useful Guidelines

With two unbalanced hands or a nine-card fit, add losers

Average opening bid	7 losers
Limit raise	8 losers
Make 4 of major total	14 losers or less
Bid game over partner’s limit raise	6 losers or less

When you have an unbalanced hand, but partner is balanced or you have only an eight-card fit, see how many of your losers partner can cover from this list (these are not exact figures, but plus or minus about half a trick):

Simple Raise	covers 1 loser
Limit Raise	covers 2 losers
Minimum Opener	covers 3 losers
1NT Opener	covers 4 losers

As well as losers, you need to look at quick tricks:

Ace	1 QT
King-x	1/2 QT
King-Queen	1 QT
Ace-Queen	1-1/2 QT
Ace-King	2 QT

As well as 7 losers, a minimum opening bid has 2-1/2 QT or more. If you have a 6-loser hand (above-average opener), you may open at the one level with 2 QT or more. This is lighter initial action than recommended in standard bidding.

♠	A9753
♥	AQ76
♦	53
♣	64

is an opening bid!

If you want to explore these ideas further, Ron Klinger has written an excellent book on the topic, called Modern Losing Trick Count, and there is also a pamphlet on the topic that you can get from most bridge supply houses.