Expert Hand Evaluation

If bidding were as simple as counting high-card points, most of us would have lost interest in bridge a long time ago. Appreciating the life-long challenge of a game immune to mastery, experts are always trying to hone their bidding judgment.

This book's aim is to help you develop good bidding judgment by refining and improving your hand evaluation, which is the bedrock of good bidding. Learning the requirements for everyday sequences suffices to solve a great many situations -- but often not when a borderline hand falls into the gray zone. Then, it is important to understand what your hand is worth. And that's the main point of Part I of this book. Part II explores using judgment for potentially problematic bidding sequences not neatly resolved by your bidding toolbox. Applying the hand-evaluation judgment learned in Part I will help you think outside the box.