Читать книгу The Times Beginner’s Guide to Bridge - Andrew Robson - Страница 16

There is a unique method in bridge of evaluating the power of your hand – its trick-taking potential – based on the high cards. For each ace, the best card in the suit, you count four points, each king counts three, each queen is two and each jack (knave) one. No points are counted for tens and below.

As soon as you’ve sorted your hand and noted its distribution, you should count your points. There are 40 points in the whole pack – four aces, four kings, four queens and four jacks. The average number of points in any one hand is ten (one ace, one king, one queen and one jack). The hand in the previous diagram contains only seven points; if this were yours you should hope that your partner has a few more points.

Useful tip

Tens and nines may not count as points, but they are nevertheless potentially useful cards, and better than twos and threes.