9 Don’t be a slave to points

If you have learnt your bridge on the basis that you need to have a certain number of points to make every bid, I would ask you to start thinking outside that box.  The time to be inside the box is NT bidding, where points work at their best. Elsewhere they are just a general guide and  sometimes they are quite useless. (One fine day you pick up 13 spades. Dare you bid? It’s only 10 points… )  I hope you have read my tip explaining the Strength Scale based on points. This gets you in the right area, but it’s a good idea to use another system  to check your strength, one that works on any hand: Honour Tricks (HT).

This is so logical that we should all be able to construct a table using common sense and the knowledge that finesses have a 50% chance, in general.  Here’s a preliminary table for you to learn:

2HT  AK

11/2 AQ

1       A, KQ, KJ10

1/2    Kx, QJx

This is slightly incomplete because the real strength of your hand depends on other factors, but this will get you a long way.  Add up all the HT in your hand to get your total (any spare queens, jacks or tens can tip a borderline case). It works out that our 12-point opening hand will equal 3HT, and the responder’s 6-9 is about 11/2 HT. The 16-18 hand is 4HT, and so on.

Look at this hand:

S   x x

H  A J xx

D  K x x x

C  Q x x

10 points, 2HT (11/2 + spare J & Q)

Touchers are worth more than gapped honours

When you pick up your hand, always scan it eagerly to see how many touchers you have, and mentally add 1 point for every toucher, though you should deduct from your total points if you have too many lonely honours (aces excepted). See how inaccurate points can be compared with HT:

AK is 7 points, so is A in one suit, Kx in another. Are both holdings equal? You know that the single king only makes half the time, and then only if you lead up to it, whereas the touching king makes every time because the ace boosts it - the king is worth the same as the ace. So in reality one holding is worth 2 tricks, the other 11/2 tricks. Another example: AKQJ doesn’t need much luck to produce four lovely tricks (give it 13 pts.). Now put those four honours in four different suits. How many tricks can you expect? You’d be lucky to make two. But both holdings count 10 pts officially.