Hand Evaluation in Bridge
- the basics

Hand evaluation is a key skill in bridge, crucial for good bidding. It's about figuring out how strong your hand is and sharing this with your partner. At first, you might just count points, but with more experience, you learn to consider many other factors. This article explores the next steps to evaluate your hand and how to use this knowledge in bidding. This guide is for beginners, if you are an expert player you might find it too basic, but please share it with your aspiring bridge friends!

Counting High Card Points (HCP)

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Counting high card points (HCP) is the fundamental technique for hand evaluation in bridge. It's typically the first method you encounter as a beginner. The system is straightforward: assign point values to high cards—Aces are 4, Kings 3, Queens 2, and Jacks 1. Summing these gives your hand's HCP total. This metric guides bidding decisions; for instance, you generally open bidding with at least 12 points. Collaboration with your partner is key: a combined total of 25 HCP (Some might say, 26 or 24 but for the purposes of this article, we will use the 25 point rule) suggests potential for a game contract. For higher-level contracts, the requirements increase: 28 points for a 5-level contract and 33 for a slam.

For the purposes of this article, we will use the 25 point rule.

Let's say your partner opens with 15-17 NT, and you have 8 points.

That means, your partner needs to have a maximum for his opening bid to be able to make a game. Typically you would either pass, or if your hand looks good, make an invitational bid. But, how do you know if your hand looks good? This is where hand evaluation comes in.

Dummy points

This method of evaluation usually shows up when you are responding to your partner's opening bid. What is the idea? If you have shortness in a suit, and you can support partner in his suit, you should increase the value of your hand.  Why? Because you can ruff small cards in the short suit to win extra tricks!

Just like anything in bridge, there are many schools of thought on how to count dummy points. Some people count 1 point for a doubleton, 2 points for a singleton and 3 points for a void. Others count 0 points for a doubleton, 1 point for a singleton and 2 points for a void. There are also those who give 1, 3 and 5 respectively. This is of course not an exact science, but the idea is that shortness is valuable. Regardless of which method you use, here are some pointers about how to use dummy points:

• You should only count dummy points if you are the hand with the shorter trumps, the one that will be dummy. That is usually responder, but it can be either partner once a fit is agreed — shortness is only worth something if the other hand has the trump length to ruff with.
• You should only count dummy points if you can support partner's suit. That means you should have at least 8 cards in the suit combined.
• Having 3 card support is almost required before adding any value for your shortness, and 4 card support is preferred.
• Be careful when adding dummy points when supporting a minor suit, as you might end up in a NT contract. Normally, only use dummy points in a major suit fit.
• If you have a singleton or doubleton honor, be careful to not count it both for its full value as well as the dummy points. For example, if you have a singleton King and you are using the 1-3-5 method, you could count it as 3 points for the singleton, and perhaps add another point for the King for a total of 4. But counting it as 6 points would be way too much.

Test your knowledge

We will apply the 1-2-3 method to adding dummy points.

Thank you for following along so far, and if this was too easy for you - please share it with an aspiring bridge friend!

Length and suit quality

Another method of assessing the strength of your hand is to measure the length and quality of the suit. You typically don't do this when you've already added dummy points. The idea is that long suits are valuable, as they provide a source of tricks. The longer the suit, the more tricks you can take. The suit quality is also important, as honors in the suit can promise to set up the suit faster.

Let's consider the two following 14 point hands:

Which one is more powerful? Hopefully you understand now that the second hand is much better, and in fact it's so strong that it should be an easy upgrade to a 15-17 NT opening bid. The KQJT9 suit is worth 4 tricks on its own, just knock the ace out and you are good to go.

One trap that is easy to fall into, is to start adding points for both shortness (dummy points) and long suits. This can be a mistake, as you are double counting the shape of the hand. Length and shortness come hand in hand.

The final piece of the puzzle is looking at spot cards. High spot cards, especially in long suits, are also valuable and can be used as a tipping point when deciding whether to upgrade your hand or not.

Test your knowledge

Using a combination of dummy points and suit quality, you should be able to evaluate a lot of situations in bridge. But this is not the end of the story. There are more methods of hand evaluation, and we will cover them in the future.

Thank you for reading this article and I hope you learned something!
Please share it with your bridge friends!

Emanuel Unge

Founder of Cuebids