Hand Evaluation

I’ve been doing more teaching lately, primarily of beginners, but also some intermediates. That has brought the topic of hand evaluation higher into my awareness.

How do you  evaluate your hand? Do you use the Work point-count? Do you adjust your point-count for distribution, or maybe use a different count, like Zar Points? Or maybe you follow the Losing Trick Count? Are you a devotee of The Law in competitive situations, or do you keep adjusting whatever measure you started with?

There’s a plethora (love that word) of methods out there. We start the beginners with a simple 4-3-2-1 point-count, but soon enough they start asking about other things. We can’t help but introduce “adjustments” for long suits or short suits almost immediately, because the truth of the matter is that the 4-3-2-1 count just doesn’t work very well. And once that cat’s out of the bag, we’re left wondering what’s the best method to tell people to use.

Part of my problem is that I’m not entirely sure how I evaluate my hands when I play for real. I do count points, and for balanced hands I pretty much let myself be guided by the count. But when distribution starts to be a factor – like, most of the time – I tend to bid pretty much what I feel like. Now, my feelings tend to be pretty good and consistent, based, I suppose, on my past experience and study. But I’m a bit at a loss to explain how I arrive at the bids I make.

Many years ago, I discovered the Losing Trick Count, chiefly through the writings of Harrison-Gray. I immediately became a convert, and I still think it’s the best practical method for evaluating distributional deals. What sold me the most, of course, is that it seems to provide me with a justification for bidding what I wanted to bid anyway, most of the time. How can I not like a method that agrees with me? But also, the factors that the LTC inherently takes into account make logical sense to me. When you look at the cards covering losers, you are automatically weighting controls and whether the high cards are in your long suits. (Other methods, such as Zar Points, take account of some of this stuff, but the calculations aren’t quite so easy to do, and the results aren’t quite so easy to evaluate either). Once you have found a trump fit with partner, you can start adding your losers together and making adjustments for extra trumps, and there is a logical basis for using these calculations to decide how high to bid. Devotees of The Law also have an easy calculation, but as has been pointed out in detail by Lawrence and Wirgren, they have no reason to think that the answer they come up with is any use. Those authors have come up with their own method of evaluation, and I think it is probably very accurate when you can see both hands. But it isn’t clear to me how to apply their methods easily in the practical situation of looking just at your own hand, so I still favor the Losing Trick Count.

I guess my bottom line is that I go with Work point-count for balanced hands, the Losing Trick Count for distributional hands, and a mystical combination of the two when we’re in the usual murky situation. Oh well.

 

I didn’t want to weigh this entry down with detailed descriptions of the individual methods, but lots of information is available on the net. Here are some references: I’m not endorsing any of these sites or descriptions as being especially good, but if you want to look up a particular method, here are some places to start.

The Losing Trick Count

http://www.bridgehands.com/L/Losing_Trick_Count.htm

Zar Points

http://www.bridgeguys.com/pdf/ZarPoints2003BOOK.pdf

The Law

http://www.pattayabridge.com/conventions/law-total-tricks.htm

Discussing the Law

http://www.newbridgelaw.com/