Hand Evaluation

Board 15
South Deals
N-S Vul

♠	A 6 4
♥	J 6 4
♦	J 10 3
♣	Q 7 5 4

♠	10 9
♥	A 10 2
♦	A 7 4
♣	A K 9 8 2

N
W		E
S

♠	K Q J 8 7 5 3
♥	K Q 9 3
♦	Q
♣	6

♠	2
♥	8 7 5
♦	K 9 8 6 5 2
♣	J 10 3

West	North	East	South
Hallberg	Fallenius	Deutsch	Welland
			Pass
1 NT	Pass	4 ♣	Pass
4 NT	Pass	6 ♠	All pass

6 ♠ by East

Trick	Lead	2nd	3rd	4th
1. S	♦ 9	A	3	Q
2. W	♠ 10	4	K	2
3. E	♠ Q	♦ 2	9	A

Made 6 — EW +980

In BridgeComposer windows, web pages, and (optionally) PDF documents, when the mouse hovers over a hand, a tooltip pops up giving evaluation of the hand by the methods described below.

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HCP

High Card Points. A = 4, K = 3, Q = 2, J = 1. Used to evaluate hands for notrump bidding. The basis for many other methods.

Length Points

HCP plus one point for each card over four in every suit. Can be used to gauge opening bids, responses, and rebids. See Commonsense Bidding by William S. Root.

Shortage Points

HCP plus doubleton = 1, singleton = 2, void = 3. Older alternative to length points, can be used to gauge opening bids, responses, and rebids. See Five Weeks to Winning Bridge by Alfred Sheinwold.

Support Points

HCP plus doubleton = 1, singleton = 3, void = 5. Also known as dummy points, can be used when supporting partner's suit. See either reference above.

K-R Points

(Optional, as selected by the creator of the document.) Kaplan-Rubens hand evaluation method. "Highly regarded as the definitive gauge to evaluate a bridge hand." See Kaplan-Rubens Evaluation Stats by Richard Pavlicek.

Zar Points

(Optional, as selected by the creator of the document.) Zar high card points plus Zar distribution points. A statistically derived method for evaluating hands. See the Wikipedia article for details.

Controls

A = 2, K = 1. Used in some slam-bidding conventions.

Quick Tricks

AK = 2, AQ = 1½, KQ = 1, A = 1, guarded K = ½.

Losers

The losing trick count. Count only the top three cards in each suit. With three or more cards in a suit, A, K and Q are winners, lower cards are losers (maximum of 3). Note that Q98 or worse counts as 2½ losers. With two cards in a suit, A and K are winners, lower cards are losers (but AQ tight counts as no losers). With one card in a suit, A is a winner, any lower card is a loser. Void counts as no losers. Can be used to assess how high to bid. See The Modern Losing Trick Count by Ron Klinger.

Freakness

(Optional, as selected by the creator of the document.) A number from 0 to 20 describing the "freakness" of the hand distribution, as formulated by Richard Pavlicek. See Patterns and Freakness for details.

Hand Evaluation

See Also