Lesson 1: Evaluation of Honors
Honor = Ace, King, Queen, Jack
Remember
⇒ 13 tricks in each deal. Honors win 10 tricks, small cards win 3 tricks.
⇒ We use 2 honor evaluation methods: High Card Points (HCP) and Honor Tricks (HT)
⇒ A = 4 HCP or 1 HT
⇒ K = 3 HCP or ¾ HT
⇒ Q = 2 HCP or ½ HT
⇒ J = 1 HCP or ¼ HT
Lesson overview
Bridge is a game of tricks. There are 13 tricks in each deal. The presumption is that honors win 10 tricks, which we call "Honor Tricks", and small cards win 3 tricks, which we call "Length Tricks".
We use two honor evaluation methods: High Card Points (HCP) and Honor Trick (HT).
Honor tricks are cards (Aces, Kings, Queens, Jacks) that have a high chance of winning a trick in the card play.
- All aces win a trick so we can count 1 HT for each ace.
- We expect that 1 king will be taken by the ace so we count that 3 kings win a trick = 3 tricks / 4 kings = ¾ = 0.75 HT.
- We expect that 2 queens will be taken either by the ace or by the king = 2 tricks / 4 queens = 2/4 = ½ = 0.5 HT
- Most jacks will be taken by higher cards, but the expectation is that one of them wins a trick = 1 trick / 4 jacks = ¼ = 0.25 HT
Ace = 1 HT / 4 HCP
King = ¾ HT / 3 HCP
Queen = ½ HT / 2 HCP
J = ¼ HT / 1 HCP
