Hand Evaluation Set 1 - 329

This Week in Bridge Practice Hands

Hand Evaluation: Before the Auction Begins (Set 1 of 8)

Evaluating our hand is a bit of an art form. There are many things to take into consideration. Before we the auction begins, we only have the information about the board (position and vulnerability) as well as our cards to help us make a decision. We begin with HCP and then make adjustments to our values for location of honors and distribution. Here we look at our considerations and how to calculate our values.

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You (and your partners) can sign up for Robert Todd's This Week in Bridge (TWiB) lesson emails for free at https://www.advinbridge.com/twib-signup This set accompanies TWiB 329.

HE Landing Set 2 - 330

This Week in Bridge Practice Hands

Hand Evaluation: Counting Points - After Partner Bids
(set 2 of 8)

Before the auction begins, we evaluate our hand with HCP and adjustments (length point upgrades and short honor downgrades). After this, when we hear partner bid, we need to make use of this information to re-evaluate our hand. We upgrade for "fits and fitting honors" and downgrade for "misfits". Let's take a look at some examples of how this can affect our subsequent bidding.

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You (and your partners) can sign up for Robert Todd's This Week in Bridge (TWiB) lesson emails for free at https://www.advinbridge.com/twib-signup This set accompanies TWiB 330.

HE Landing Set 3 - 331

This Week in Bridge Practice Hands

Hand Evaluation: Counting Points - When the Opponent’s Bid
(set 3 of 8)

When the opponents bid, we have extremely valuable additional information that we can use to help us re-evaluating our hand. Location of our honors and types of holdings we have (tenaces in good or bad locations) dramatically affect the playing strength of our hand. Let's look at how we incorporate that information into our bidding.

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You (and your partners) can sign up for Robert Todd's This Week in Bridge (TWiB) lesson emails for free at https://www.advinbridge.com/twib-signup This set accompanies TWiB 331.

HE Landing Set 4 - 332

This Week in Bridge Practice Hands

Hand Evaluation: Evaluation and Re-Evaluate (set 4 of 8)

Hand Evaluation is something we do all throughout the auction. We start evaluating and keep re-evaluating as we get more information from both partner and the opponents. This means that the value we assign to our hand (number of points) constantly changes during the auction. Let's make sure that we fluidly evaluate our hand and actively make use of the information that becomes available to us.

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You (and your partners) can sign up for Robert Todd's This Week in Bridge (TWiB) lesson emails for free at https://www.advinbridge.com/twib-signup This set accompanies TWiB 332.

HE Landing Set 5 - 333

This Week in Bridge Practice Hands

Hand Evaluation: Law of Total Tricks (set 5 of 8)

When we have a large fit, one of our most valuable tools for determining how much to bid is the Law of Total Tricks. The simple version of this bidding guideline is to bid to the size of our fit. This is particularly valuable in helping us know how much to bid in competitive auctions. Get some practice in using this tool to help you evaluate the playing strength of your hand.

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You (and your partners) can sign up for Robert Todd's This Week in Bridge (TWiB) lesson emails for free at https://www.advinbridge.com/twib-signup This set accompanies TWiB 333.

HE Landing Set 6 - 334

This Week in Bridge Practice Hands

Hand Evaluation: Double Fits and Misfits (set 6 of 8)

When we discover that we have two large fits (at least 8 cards in both suits) then we can often take a lot of tricks without too many HCP. Similarly, when we discover that the hand is a misfit (we are short in partner's long suit and partner is short in our long suit), then it may be difficult to take tricks. Let's take a look at some of these hands and see how we upgrade and downgrade respectively in these different situations.

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You (and your partners) can sign up for Robert Todd's This Week in Bridge (TWiB) lesson emails for free at https://www.advinbridge.com/twib-signup This set accompanies TWiB 334.

HE Landing Set 7 - 335

This Week in Bridge Practice Hands

Hand Evaluation: Fitting Honors and Wasted Values (set 7 of 8)

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When it comes to evaluating our hand, the location of our honors is often more important than how many points we hold. Honors that fit together with partner's long suits are extremely valuable, while honors that are opposite partner's shortness are often wasted. Let's take a look at how we re-evaluate the quality of our honor holdings, upgrading for fitting cards and downgrading for wasted values.

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You (and your partners) can sign up for Robert Todd's This Week in Bridge (TWiB) lesson emails for free at https://www.advinbridge.com/twib-signup This set accompanies TWiB 335.

Hand Evaluation Set 8 - 336

This Week in Bridge Practice Hands

Hand Evaluation: Losers and Covers (Set 8 of 8)

Losing Trick Count is powerful hand evaluation tool when used properly. The concept is that once we know that we are going to play in a suit contract (for example, find a Major suit fit), then we know that we will count losers (not winners) in the play. But before we get to the auction, we can count our losers and by approximating how many useful cards partner may provide (how many “cover cards”) and determine what contract we can likely make. Let’s take a look at some examples and see how this works.

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You (and your partners) can sign up for Robert Todd's This Week in Bridge (TWiB) lesson emails for free at https://www.advinbridge.com/twib-signup This set accompanies TWiB 336.