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Last night I had this hand: QTxx x AKxxxxx x Playing imps, unfavorable. So let's say you're not a bridge player. How do you make sense of this? The four suits -- spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs -- sit in that exact hierarchy. When we "give" a hand (which is to say, when we talk about bridge hands we have to actually say what the cards in the hand are so that our audience can follow the story), we tell the spade suit first, followed by hearts and then diamonds then clubs. Early this morning (don't ask!) I "gave" this hand to George. I said, "Can I give you a hand?" "Sure." "Ok. You have queen-ten-fourth, stiff, ace-king-seventh and stiff." Look at the hand above -- QTxx/x/AKxxxxx/x. Can you see how that becomes queen ten fourth (spades), stiff (hearts)...? The x's are insignificant little cards. "Ok." Means George can visualize the hand. "You're up." He's supposed to bid (or pass). "One diamond." Let's stop here for a second. In order to evaluate the hand, you need to know a little more about the game. If you've read Chapter One, you know a little bit about this. Bear with me. Evaluating a hand begins with looking for face cards. We assign a numeric value to each face card: Aces are worth four points, Kings are three, Queens are two, Jacks are one. "You have a nine count." "It's a player." Right. Here's the next step: there are a total of 40 points in a deck of cards. Ace/king/queen/jack in each of four suits. In order for one side to take more tricks than the other side, they need to have a preponderance of the high card points. So in general, we bid when the high cards in our hand hit roughly 12. The hand above doesn't fit that. But we can all look at the hand and know that it's a player. We have seven diamonds. And four spades. "Let's say you pass." Shannon, my regular partner, will probably be in the camp of passers. I thought for a long while before passing -- wanted very much to bid one diamond. "I guess so." "It goes pass, pass, one diamond from partner." George chuckles. When partner bids one diamond, we know for sure that she has three and probably four diamonds. After three passes, she might have a weak hand, ten or eleven high card points, or she might have a gazillion. Unknown. "Righty bids one heart, so we bid double, showing our four spades." Someday I'll blog about doubles. Not today. "Lefty bids two hearts, partner bids two spades. Righty bids three hearts." Now what? Back to work. Big busy day. Thinking of you.

Posted by Stacy Jacobs on Friday, September 29, 2006 at 9/29/2006 07:29:00 AM | Permalink