Sunday,
April 12, 2009
Hand Evaluation – HCP ( Losing Trick Count )
PITBULLS:
I have written many articles that experts
are not “slaves to the HCP system ” for hand evaluation. They look at quick trick combinations to help them evaluate
a hand rather than mere totals. Believe it or not ,
realizing or just being aware of your quick
trick combinations is a Bridge skill. You are so conditioned to totalling HCP’s , you may not even notice the
quick trick combinations in your
hand !. Bridge is a trick taking game not a HCP taking game. HCP’s do not
necessarily equate to tricks unless
they are in quick trick combinations or you are very lucky with your
“unsupported” honour cards or soft values. This is why the Bridge greats made
quick tricks a requirement for an opening
bid. The nature of the game of Bridge makes the practice of opening garbage a very poor tactic.
There is a 3rd way of looking at your hand which has been around since
the Culbertson days. This method is to notice
the losers in your hand , count them followed by
adding the losers from partner’s hand based
on the bidding . Subtract this total from
24 & you have the expected number of tricks you will
take. We are presenting this article so that you will get away from the
horrible habit of just evaluating your hand based solely on totalling HCP’s. Only beginners do this. I repeat totalling HCP’s are the training wheels
of Bridge & a very rough guide.
HCP’s work well for NT contracts , quick trick evaluation for suit
contracts & LTC when you have found a fit.
A Tormentee
made a vulnerable T/O double of 2♠ recently forcing her partner to the 3
level with ♠Qx
♥KQxxx ♦QJx ♣Kxx .
Count your HCP’s like a beginner you have 13 HCP’s so you double
, correct ? Not a chance , your
HCP’s are not in the correct quick trick
combinations & your balanced hand with soft values ( lack of quick tricks ) means too many losers. Trade your spade queen ( useless
on auction ) for the club queen & you would be up to 2 quick tricks.
Your loser count changes automatically
to 6 ( better hand ).
Still not enough to force partner to the 3 level vul though. Count your losers & they total 7.
Again, too many
losers to force partner to the 3 level
vulnerable. As mentioned below, balanced hands ( 5-3-3-2
in your case) have more losers than other distributions. LTC also has a high
correlation with quick tricks &
patterns. When your HCP’s are in quick
trick combinations, you have less overall losers ( see examples below
) . This is why “thinking in quick tricks” & “thinking in patterns” are so important in
Bridge. Informing partner of the total HCP’s in your hand is not enough. There are more important
elements in Bridge
than totalling mere
HCP’s. Points , Schmoints
!!
Susan Culham opened 1♦
with ♠K10xx ♥x ♦AK10xxx
♣xx .
How good an opener is it ? The 2 ½ quick tricks located in her two longer
suits makes this hand a very good opener. Let Klingers
scheme help you evaluate this hand . 2 losers in
♠’s , one in ♥’s , one in ♦’s & 2 in clubs for a total of 6 losers.
Klinger equates 6 loser hands to about 16 HCP for the bean counters
. He considers this a very sound opening . Learn
from Klinger as he knows what he is talking about. It is called hand evaluation
vrs totaling HCP’s a very repetitive
theme . Unlearning
the beginner notion of just totalling
HCP’s appears painful to some. Why ???
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1. WHAT IS THE LOSING
TRICK COUNT? By Ron Klinger Why do we count points? Purely as
a guide to the number of tricks we
figure to win. 26 points means a game is probable, 33 points and a slam is
likely. The Losing Trick Count (called LTC from here on) is a different means
of assessing the number of tricks the partnership is likely to win. It is
used after a trump fit has been
established and is clearly superior to
counting points because more accurate assessments are obtained more
often. Suppose you pick up, lucky you: ª A © 7 ¨ A K Q 9 8 7 6 4 3 2
§ 6 What is your hand worth? If you thought of this as thirteen
points, even for a fleeting moment, your bridge
concepts require a drastic
overhaul. The hand should be viewed as 11 winners, 2 losers. And all you
need to know is whether partner can cover both of your losers, only one of
them or none at all. For this, the Blackwood Convention, sooner or later,
will solve your problems. LTC operates in a similar way.
Even though your winners and losers are not as clear cut as in the above example,
LTC enables you to gauge the playing strength of your own hand and estimate
accurately the trick taking potential of partner's. Put these assessments
together and you can tell how many tricks the partnership will win most of
the time. Sound easy? You will be surprised
just how easy it all is. 2. THE BASIC LOSING
TRICK COUNT How To Assess The Partnership's
Playing Strength The LTC is used after
a trump fit has been established.
It is not designed for notrump hands and is quite unsuitable for misfit hands.
Thus, it is vital that you do not
envisage LTC as replacing point count.
It is used as an adjunct to the point count when a trump fit comes to light. After the trump fit is known, LTC
will give a more accurate guide to the potential of the partnership hands. 3. COUNTING YOUR LOSERS A. THE RAW COUNT Count losers only in the first three
cards of each suit (The 4th, 5th, 6th etc. cards in a suit are
taken as winners.) With three or more cards in a
suit: Count the A, K and Q as winners;
anything lower is a loser. With two cards in a suit: Count the A and K as winners;
anything lower is a loser. With one card in a suit: Count the A as a winner; anything
lower is a loser. There are never more than three
losers in a suit. There are never more losers in a suit than the number of
cards in the suit. Axiom 1: As points increase, losers
decrease; as points decrease losers increase.
Axiom 2: The more balanced a hand,
the more losers; the more unbalanced a hand, the fewer the losers:
Even if self evident, these
fundamental principles are worth repeating: As the points increase,
the losers decrease. As the points
decrease, the losers increase. The more unbalanced
the hand, the fewer the losers. The more balanced the
hand, the more losers. Let's take another look at the
slam hand of the lesson, using just the Raw LTC Count:
Your losers 7 Add partner's losers
5 Total losers 12 Deduct from 24 = 12, the number of tricks
expected if spades are trumps (and the breaks are normal). Your partnership should reach 6♠ , despite only 24 HCP’s. The reason is responders has 7 losers which
is in the opening bid range !!! Counting losers is just another way of appreciating distribution &
quick tricks which experts do subconsciously from experience. . ASSESSING PARTNER'S
LOSERS On the surface this seems to be a
tough problem but in reality it is no more difficult than gauging partner's
points. If you can tell how strong partner's hand is,
you can calculate the losers. The basis is: MINIMUM OPENING HAND = 7 LOSERS We have seen that the actual
losers vary according to strength and shape. Nevertheless, the average
minimum opening is around the 7 loser mark and this is the best starting
point for your assessment. These are routine 1§
openings on around 13 points: ª A Q 7 4 ª 7 6 4 © J 4 © K 3 ¨ 6 3 2 ¨ 9 8 3 § A K 9 3 § A K Q 8 6 Note that each hand has 7 losers. You calculate partner's losers
based on the strength revealed in the bidding. A simple working guide would look
like this:
Why Subtract from 24? LTC
operates only with a trump fit of 8 cards or more. Assuming an eight-card
fit, if the suit is breaking 3-2, you can expect to not lose more than three
tricks in any suit. Thus With
853 we expect to ruff the fourth lead. With J984 we expect on normal breaks
that either the fourth card will be established or partner can ruff. etc ... Therefore,
your hand has at most 12 losers and so has partner's. So the total number of
possible losers is 24 (always provided that there is a trump fit). Hence: MAXIMUM
LOSERS (24) - ACTUAL LOSERS = EXPECTED WINNERS |