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Hand Evaluation
Part II
by Brian Senior
The difference is not quite so great
this time, but hand (iii) has an important edge over hand (iv) nonetheless.
It is that all its honours are in useful combinations. Even without
fitting honours in partner's hand, this means that you have suits
you can play on, while if partner does deliver a fitting honour
any of the three suits could be a very useful source of tricks.
Conversely, hand (iv) includes unsupported honours and less attractive
honour combinations. The Q
would be an excellent fitting card, but in most suits a single fitting
honour will not create a suit on which you can play without running
the risk of establishing extra defensive tricks.
The same shape and the same honour
cards, but hand (v) has the edge because there are more honour cards
in the long suits where, not only might they make tricks in their
own right, but where they might help to establish extra length tricks.
Honours in a short suit may still win tricks themselves, but they
are less likely to help to establish length tricks.
Again we see two hands with the same
shape and honour cards, but I hope you can see that hand (viii)
is much the stronger. The doubleton honours in hand (vii) are not
pulling their weight at all.
Consider that you hope to find a trump fit with partner and that
the most likely place to find one is in one of your long suits.
Either black suit in hand (vii) would require partner to hold a
number of honours as well as length if you were not to have trump
losers, while just one honour may be sufficient opposite one of
hand (viii)'s black suits.
Quite apart from anything else, the one suit in which you cannot
avoid losing whatever tricks are due is the trump suit, in any other
suit you have the prospect of discarding losers on winners in another
suit.
Again, if you play a very aggressive style, you might wish to open
both of this pair of hands. Really, however, only hand (viii) looks
like an opening bid to me. Hand (vii) has plenty of defensive values
but has a lot of potential losers as declarer or dummy, so it makes
more sense to Pass. You can always reevaluate your hand if partner
opens the bidding but it is hard to see what you will miss if partner
cannot open, and you certainly do not want to open 1
and encourage him to lead a spade if you end up on defence.
A long suit can be a useful source
of extra tricks. Imagine that partner has three small cards opposite
your AJ10 ;
you have a good chance of taking two tricks; opposite AJ109,
you are favourite to take three tricks; opposite AJ1096 you
rate to make four tricks.
On that basis, hand (ix) will often be a full trick better than
hand (x). Though the difference will not be quite as great if partner
holds only a small singleton or doubleton, the extra card may still
prove useful so to count both hands as being worth 12 HCP
can hardly be correct.
Suppose that you opened each hand with a weak no trump and partner
invited 3NT. Even with hand (x) you are close to being worth
a game bid as, though you have only 12 HCP, the diamond intermediates
are a significant plus feature (much better than AJxx), worth
almost a full HCP. Hand (ix) should be an automatic 3NT bid.
The combination of long suit plus intermediates makes this into
a maximum, despite its mere 12 HCP.
Though even the beginner is taught to add a point for a five card
suit, this should not be considered to be an absolute rule.
While the diamond suit in hand (xi)
looks as though it may provide several tricks and so justifys upgrading
the hand by at least a point, that in (xii) will require a lot of
work to establish. While all the honours in (xii) are O.K. I would
not consider the fifth diamond to be much of a plus feature at all
and would value the hand at its basic 13 points
. Once again , if we had opened with a weak no trump and heard partner
make an invitational raise, hand (xi) would have an automatic acceptance
while hand (xii) would be much closer, though I suppose that I would
bid the game, I would not be at all surprised to find it going down.
I hope that I am starting to convince you that there is more to
judging a hand than just counting HCP
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