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Dummy Points
Dummy Hand Evaluation

When you have support for partner's suit, particularly a major suit, and you expect to be dummy, what is the correct way to evaluate your hand? Marty Bergen has a simple method of adding a point value for shortages to your initial starting points.

Starting points are your High Card points adjusted upwards for good quality suits, an abundance of Aces and 10s over Queens and Jacks (as Aces and 10s are undervalued in the standard Milton point count whereas Queens and Jacks are overvalued), and for 5 or more cards in a suit, and then adjusted downwards for poor honour holdings like a doubleton Q, which may be worthless.

There were at least 3 boards from 18 August where very few pairs found the making game contracts. These were boards 12, 17 and 27, and certainly in teams I would have wanted to be in all of them. The reason game was not bid at my table, and probably at most of the other tables, was due to an under assessment of the potential dummy's value. I would like to highlight South on board 12 . At my table after 1♣ pass 2♣, South made a take out double, which was passed by West. North made the forced. 2♠ bid, so now what is the value of South's hand? After East bid 3♣, knowing North could have a bust, what would you do?

According to Bergen the South hand is worth 19 points. You have 15 HCPs, a great spade suit with 3 of the top five honours so add 1,and you also have 3 more points for the singleton club, making 19 plus a positive feature in that all your HCPs are almost certain to be working. Optimists might even bid 4♠! But with a potential bust opposite I think a 3♠ bid is warranted whether or not East bids 3♣ or not. With a fifth spade, no losing values in the club suit opposite certain shortage and 5 more points than you might have had, possibly all working, North should now raise to 4♠.

You can get a copy of Marty Bergen's Hand Evaluation flipper for around £5. If you read the short number of 23 pages, and apply the lessons from it, you will become a far better bidder overnight. Guaranteed!