Outrageous!. Good bridge players make bids that often seem outrageous to intermediate players, yet the cards in the dummy are magic and opponents are helpless to defeat the contracts. How does this happen?
Points, Smoints ! Dorothy Truscott, one of the finest players in the world, said this years ago, and it's still true. Good bridge players know and remember one fact: Bridge is a game about tricks, not points. Understanding this is especially important during the bidding and it requires hand evaluation. Actually, it's hand re-evaluation.
Start With Point Count. The Point Count System, popularized by Charles Goren but invented by Milton C. Work, is a good way to begin the evaluation of a bridge hand. Virtually every player in the world uses it. So should you.
The good players remember that it is only a place to start; novices count points before the bidding starts and hang on to that number for dear life. This persistence leads to conversations, repeated thousands of times, that start one of two ways:
"But partner, I only had 10 Points!""But partner, I had 10 Points!"
Notice the difference is the word "
only". This indicates whether the failed contract was too high or too low.Use the Point Count System to start the evaluation of your hand, but alter your evaluation of it with every bid, including all passes. Every bid gives you information -- use it or you too will repeat these conversations forever.
Suppose you start with 10 HCP -- an Ace, a King, a Queen and a Jack. This is a perfectly average hand. If your partner has exactly the same, you and your opponents will each take 6 or 7 tricks if the distribution around the table is flat.
Play With A 30 HCP Deck. But as soon as you find a fit with your partner and can name trump, your hands are both worth more, as your side can take tricks with little cards that don't have any Point Card Value: 6's and 3's and 2's. If your side has 8 or 9 trumps and one of you has a void, how many points can the opponents use in that suit to take tricks against you? None. In that case, aren't you playing with a 30 point deck and not a 40 point one? If they have 8 high card points in your void suit, your points have gone up in value because they will still take tricks: theirs have gone to zero value.For the same reason, when opponents have bid and raised their suit, is your Qx of their suit really worth 2 points to you? Is it worth half an Ace? Hardly.
(c) Robert D. McConnell, 1998 All Rights Reserved