Look and Learn

22 November 1999

Hand Evaluation Part I
by Brian Senior

Good bidding is not merely a matter of having a well-developed system and of knowing it. Far more important than having a good system is good judgement, and the basis of good judgement is intelligent hand evaluation.

To a beginner and, alas to far too many experienced players, hand evaluation is a matter of counting points, mostly for high cards (HCP) but with some adjustment for holding a long or short suit. There is far more to it than that, as I hope to show over the next few months.

Let’s start by listing the factors you should take into consideration when evaluating the strength of your hand.

1. Shape

Even when intending to play in no trumps, holding a long suit can be a plus feature. Even 4-4-3-2 should be considered to be stronger than 4-3-3-3 as it gives two possible sources of an extra length trick rather than only one, while in a suit contract the doubleton may provide a trick by ruffing. A five card suit gives the possibility of two extra length card tricks, so a 5-3-3-2 shape would be considered to be better still.

2. Honour Combinations

Two honours in combination in the same suit will tend to be more powerful than the same two honours split between two different suits. A holding such as Qxxx needs a lot of help from the partner’s hand before it will supply many tricks, whereas K-Qxx is a holding with some potential even opposite three low.

3. Honours With Length

Honours in your long suits will tend to pull their weight better than honours in short suits. This is because it will make it easier to establish extra length tricks if you have high cards in the long suit.

For example, K-Qxx in your long suit and xx in a sidesuit will be more useful than xxxx as a long suit and K-Q as a side suit.

4. Intermediates

Intermediate cards such as nines and tens can make a big difference to a hand, particularly if they are backing up one or more higher honours. For example, try A-J-10-9 opposite xxx, then try A-Jxx opposite xxx. That should leave you in no doubt about the power of intermediate cards.

5. Sidesuit Shape

Even when holding a long suit, your sidesuit shape is worth taking into consideration. When pre-empting, 7-2-2-2 is always considered to be the worst possible shape, while 7-3-2-1 is better and 7-3-3-0 or 7-4-2-0 better still in the long run. This is because 7-2-2-2 threatens to have losers in every suit, needing the partner to have a lot of strength if he is to cover them; also, you have no suit in which to establish tricks and are unlikely to be able to ruff anything in dummy.

The more unbalanced your sidesuit shape becomes, the better the chance of just getting lucky with the position of partner’s high cards, and the greater the possibility that you will have an unpleasant surprise for the opposition should they come into the auction.

All the above are factors to consider when taking a close decision whether to open a hand, or perhaps to look for game or slam after your partner has opened the bidding or responded. When you are not the first to bid a suit the position of your honours should also be taken into account bearing in mind the bidding to date.

6. Partner’s Suit

Honours in partner’s suit(s) will tend to be more valuable than honours in unbid suits. This is because you are providing cards which may help to establish his long suit for extra tricks.

If partner bids two suits, shortage in one of them can also be useful, but only if you have genuine support for the other one so that you can ruff any losers he may have in the first suit. You must have sufficient trumps to look after all his losers or the shortage may not be as useful as it looks at first glance.

7. Opponents’ Suits

Honours in the opponents’ suits are generally less useful than in your sides’ suits in that, while they may be necessary as stoppers, they will rarely produce many length tricks. It is necessary, however, to distinguish between suits bid on your right and suits bid on your left.

If RHO bids spades and your spades are A-Qx or K-Jxx, you could reasonably upgrade them as your strength rates to be sitting over the missing strength, increasing the chance of your high cards making tricks. Conversely, xxx would be a poor holding as any strength your side holds must be in the partner’s hand, under the missing high cards.

If LHO bids a suit in which you hold A-Qx or K-Jxx, you should downgrade it; this time it looks as though their strength is sitting over your strength, making tricks hard to come by. On the other hand, three small becomes a reasonable holding as you have no wasted values and partner may have well-placed cards.

8. Opposite Shortage

If the bidding makes it clear that partner is short in a suit, a holding such as xxx(x) is a very good one, assuming that you have a trump fit elsewhere, as it means that you have no wasted high cards and partner can easily ruff your losers in the suit.

Conversely, K-Jxx would be a poor holding as the honours will provide few tricks if any compared to partner simply ruffing your losing cards. Better to have those honour cards in some other suit where they may combine well with high cards in partner’s hand to produce tricks.

This is why so many regular tournament partnerships play Splinter Bids, as these help immediately to show whether the hands are fitting well, with no wasted values, or badly, with honours facing shortage.

Having got the theory out of the way, in the next article we will start to look at some examples to illustrate what all this means when it comes to upgrading or downgrading hands from the strength given by the raw point count.