Hand evaluation

In contract bridge, various bidding systems have been devised to enable partners to describe their hands to each other so that they may reach the optimum contract. Key to this process is that players evaluate and re-evaluate the trick-taking potential of their hands as the auction proceeds and additional information about partner's hand and the opponent's hands becomes available.

Hand evaluation methods assess various features of a hand, including: its high card strength, shape or suit distribution, controls, fit with partner, quality of suits and quality of the whole hand. The methods range from basic to complex, requiring partners to have the same understandings and agreements about their application in their bidding system.

Most bidding systems use a basic point-count system for hand evaluation using a combination of high card points and distributional points, as follows.

First published in 1915 by Bryant McCampbell in Auction Tactics (page 26), the 4-3-2-1 count for honours was not established by computer analysis (as is sometimes rumoured) but was derived from the game Auction Pitch. Although 'Robertson's Rule' for bidding (the 7-5-3 count) had been in use for more than a dozen years, McCampbell sought a more "simple scale of relative values. The Pitch Scale is the easiest to remember. (Those ... who have played Auction Pitch will have no difficulty in recognizing and remembering these values.)"

Called the Milton Work Point Count when popularized by him in the early Thirties and then the Goren Point Count when re-popularized by Work's disciple Charles Goren in the Fifties, and now known simply as the high-card point (HCP) count, this basic evaluation method assigns numeric values to the top four honour cards as follows:

Evaluating a hand on this basis takes due account of the fact that there are 10 HCP in each suit and therefore 40 in the complete deck of cards. An average hand contains one quarter of the total, i.e. 10 HCP. The method has the dual benefits of simplicity and practicality, especially in notrump contracts. Most bidding systems are based upon the premise that a better than average hand is required to open the bidding; 12 HCP is generally considered the minimum for most opening bids.

The combined HCP count between two balanced hands is generally considered to be a good indication, all else being equal, of the number of tricks likely to be made by the partnership. The rule of thumb for games and slams in notrump is as follows:

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