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The difference is not quite so great this
time, but hand (iii) has an important edge over hand (iv) nonetheless.
It is that all its honours are in useful combinations. Even without fitting
honours in partner's hand, this means that you have suits you can play
on, while if partner does deliver a fitting honour any of the three suits
could be a very useful source of tricks. Conversely, hand (iv) includes
unsupported honours and less attractive honour combinations. The Q
would be an excellent fitting card, but in most suits a single fitting
honour will not create a suit on which you can play without running the
risk of establishing extra defensive tricks.
The same shape and the same honour cards,
but hand (v) has the edge because there are more honour cards in the long
suits where, not only might they make tricks in their own right, but where
they might help to establish extra length tricks. Honours in a short suit
may still win tricks themselves, but they are less likely to help to establish
length tricks.
Again we see two hands with the same shape
and honour cards, but I hope you can see that hand (viii) is much the
stronger. The doubleton honours in hand (vii) are not pulling their weight
at all.
Consider that you hope to find a trump fit with partner and that the most
likely place to find one is in one of your long suits. Either black suit
in hand (vii) would require partner to hold a number of honours as well
as length if you were not to have trump losers, while just one honour
may be sufficient opposite one of hand (viii)'s black suits.
Quite apart from anything else, the one suit in which you cannot avoid
losing whatever tricks are due is the trump suit, in any other suit you
have the prospect of discarding losers on winners in another suit.
Again, if you play a very aggressive style, you might wish to open both
of this pair of hands. Really, however, only hand (viii) looks like an
opening bid to me. Hand (vii) has plenty of defensive values but has a
lot of potential losers as declarer or dummy, so it makes more sense to
Pass. You can always reevaluate your hand if partner opens the bidding
but it is hard to see what you will miss if partner cannot open, and you
certainly do not want to open 1
and encourage him to lead a spade if you end up on defence.
A long suit can be a useful source of extra
tricks. Imagine that partner has three small cards opposite your AJ10 ;
you have a good chance of taking two tricks; opposite AJ109, you
are favourite to take three tricks; opposite AJ1096 you rate to
make four tricks.
On that basis, hand (ix) will often be a full trick better than hand (x).
Though the difference will not be quite as great if partner holds only
a small singleton or doubleton, the extra card may still prove useful
so to count both hands as being worth 12 HCP can hardly be correct.
Suppose that you opened each hand with a weak no trump and partner invited
3NT. Even with hand (x) you are close to being worth a game bid
as, though you have only 12 HCP, the diamond intermediates are
a significant plus feature (much better than AJxx), worth almost
a full HCP. Hand (ix) should be an automatic 3NT bid. The combination
of long suit plus intermediates makes this into a maximum, despite its
mere 12 HCP.
Though even the beginner is taught to add a point for a five card suit,
this should not be considered to be an absolute rule.
While the diamond suit in hand (xi) looks
as though it may provide several tricks and so justifys upgrading the
hand by at least a point, that in (xii) will require a lot of work to
establish. While all the honours in (xii) are O.K. I would not consider
the fifth diamond to be much of a plus feature at all and would value
the hand at its basic 13 points . Once again , if we
had opened with a weak no trump and heard partner make an invitational
raise, hand (xi) would have an automatic acceptance while hand (xii) would
be much closer, though I suppose that I would bid the game, I would not
be at all surprised to find it going down. I hope that I am starting to
convince you that there is more to judging a hand than just counting HCP
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