[mikeh]

jillybean, on 2025-June-27, 14:18, said:

Where is MikeH?

Lurking


More seriously, I’ve written on hand evaluation a number of times and any response I place here will inevitably duplicate earlier posts….although my thinking does change over time, so it’s possible that my current thinking may seem slightly at odds with prior suggestions.

I don’t bother with different varieties of LTC. Imo, LTC, no matter which version one uses, is one of the cruder valuation schemes around, and spending any mental energy on more sophisticated versions is not where I want to put my ever-diminishing cognitive resources.

I do use it….in the original simple method. But it’s very much a back up method….i use it only when I feel very uncertain about the call I’m considering, and I am not ‘very uncertain’ very often.

One aspect of playing complex methods, an aspect I don’t think gets sufficient explicit reference, is that a well designed complex method solves many of the problems that arise when using simple methods.

Simple methods often create situations in which one must decide to take a fairly committal step while lacking important information. Bridge is a game of incomplete information, and simple bidding methods tend to convey less information than do complex ones (assuming, as always, a well designed system played by two players who rarely forget their methods).

The more one has to rely on guessing….aka exercising judgment….the more important hand evaluation becomes and the more factors one can consider, the better.

A simple example might help. You play 2/1 with 5 card majors but you play a very simple version. 1S 2S….where 2S is very wide range….6-10, 3-4 spades…if 10, then soft values.

As opener, with a decent but not huge hand, you have to decide whether to make a game try.

At the other table, they play multiple ways to raise….they can distinguish between minimum hands with 3 trump by going through 1N. They can show 7-10 with 3 trump by raising to 2S. They can show constructive 4 card raises by jumping to 3C….they can show a mixed raise by jumping to 3S.

So their opener has considerably more information than you do. His valuation process is going to be much easier, and he will rarely need to weigh more than the two or three methods that he most relies upon….and, for me, the LTC isn’t one of those.

Complex methods minimize a wide range of such issues…indeed, complex methods should never be adopted other than to solve or minimize the impact of problems encountered with simpler methods.

For me, pretty much as I’ve written before, I look at

Hcp

Nature of my hcp cards…I prefer aces and kings to queens and jacks…the latter tend to be ‘soft’ if not accompanied by the former

The bidding….thus my valuation changes with every bid

Distribution

Degree of fit

Location of honours….like them in my length or in partner’s suit(s), like them in combination more than in isolation


Most of the time my valuation is subconscious and results in a feeling more than a calculation. Thus I may ‘like’ my hand or I may ‘dislike’ my hand. The same hand may have me liking it during one auction and disliking it during another…..depending on the information supplied by the other players. When I like my hand, I’m aggressive. When I don’t, I’m conservative.

LTC rarely, if ever, causes me to like or dislike a hand….at least not consciously. Of course, given the factors I do weigh, LTC is sort of implicit in some of what I’m considering. A long suit headed by the AK makes me happy without explicitly counting that my LTC is going to be good.

[bluenikki]

PrecisionL, on 2025-June-29, 10:41, said:

Cover cards is my favorite evaluation tool to decide about bidding game. I have found that I have to teach many of my partners what a Limit Raise is (3 cover cards or distributional equivalent).

Surely, a limit raise is 4 potential covers.

[PrecisionL]

mike777, on 2025-June-29, 13:20, said:

,If you have the time, I hope you go into a fuller discussion of what cover cards are and how you use them in your hand evaluation methods.Issues to beware of?

Aces and Kings are cover cards as well as singletons. Queens may be 1/2 a cover card if opposite a higher honor in partner's hand. I need to reread Rosenkranz's discussion on cover cards and maybe update this comment.

Some authorities want 3 1/2 cover cards for a Limit Raise.Bridge: The Bidder's Game, Rosenkranz, 1985:

4 trumps: singleton = 1 cover card, doubleton 1/2 CC, void = 1 1/2

3 trumps: singleton = 1/2 CC, void = 1 CC,

Adjust downward if Kx or Qxx is opposite shortage.

Q = 1 CC if opposite xxx or better in partner's hand (I only give this a plus value)

Klinger has an adjustment for strong hands with excess controls (A + K) for the hcp of the hand. This is very rare to subtract 1 loser.

References: LTC (1935), LTC (Belladonna-Garozzo, 1975), Cover Cards (Rosenkranz, 1978), Control Adjustment to LTC (Klinger, 1986), NLTC (2003), ALTC (2006), MLTC (?).

[bluenikki]

PrecisionL, on 2025-June-29, 18:41, said:

Aces and Kings are cover cards as well as singletons. Queens may be 1/2 a cover card if opposite a higher honor in partner's hand. I need to reread Rosenkranz's discussion on cover cards and maybe update this comment.

Some authorities want 3 1/2 cover cards for a Limit Raise.

With 4 trumps, a singleton is 2 potential covers and a doubleton is 1.

[blackshoe]

thepossum, on 2025-June-28, 19:04, said:

"legal compliance" could be a problem for me

if anyone takes the sense of judgment and fun and a bit of risk out of Bridge I am leaving

excuse me for being ignorant of all the laws but are points and losers and numbers of cards in suits set down in law

I agree with your "if…"

This is not in the laws, it's a matter for regulation, and the various Regulating Authorities' regulations differ. The relevant law is Law 40, in particular Law 40A1(b): Each partnership has a duty to make its partnership understandings available to its opponents. The Regulating Authority specifies the manner in which this is done.

[helene_t]

For notrump contracts, 4321 points are farily accurate, but for suit contracts you need to give more value do aces and less to queens and jacks. Unfortunately I can't find my regression coefficients anywhere, I really should redo the analysis. But as I recalle the 4-3-2-1 coefficients should be something like 4.8-3.1-1.5-0.6 for suit contracts.

Then there's the issue of the value of the 9th trump and the value of shortness. Shortnesses are worth significantly more in a 9-card fit than an 8-card fit.

Traditional LTC is equivalent to
A=3.33
K=3.33 (unless singleton)
Q=3.33 (unless singleton or doubleton)
Doubleton = 3.33
Singleton = 6.67
Void = 10
9th trump = nothing

It is obviously wrong to value an ace the same as a queen, especially for suit contracts. Probably simple 4321 would be better. Certainly, 4321 with a bit of adjustment for shortness would be better.

Modified LTC where you subtract half a looser for each ace and add half a looser for each queen is equivalent to:
A=5
K=3.33 (unless singleton)
Q=1.67 (unless singleton or doubleton)
Doubleton = 3.33
Singleton = 6.67
Void = 10
9th trump = nothing

This is actually not so bad with respect to the relative values of the honours, and MLCT values shortness quite well in a 9-card fit. In an 8-card fit, it values shortness too much. And there really needs to be an explicit weight for the 9-card fit also.

What I would suggest:
- You can either use something like 5-3-1.5-0.5 points with some point value for shortness, or you can use MLCT. It is different parameterizations of the same model so it's just a matter of taste.
- Add a bit for the 9th trump, and reduce the value of shortnesses if you have only an 8-card fit.
- Obviously, shortness in the trump suit is not an assess! If you count 2 looses for xx of trump and 3 loosers for xxx of trump you are doing it wrongly!
- If your partner insists on traditional LTC, it is probably best if you do it also. The thing is that tradtional LTC grossly overstates queens and understates aces, but as long as you both do the same it is not too bad because if you have a quarky hand, there is a good chance that your partner has an acy hand. This also means that you can't use 4321 hand for the 1NT opening in compbination with traditional LTC for responder. What you can do, though, in auctions like
1NT-2♣
2♥-3♥
?
agree that 3♥ shows a certian number of LTC (or MLTC, adjusted walrus points, or whatever) and then opener uses the same scale as responder when deciding whether to accept the invite.

[DavidKok]

Thank you for the excellent post and explanation! I only have a detail to add to one small part:

helene_t, on 2025-July-01, 00:00, said:

Modified LTC where you subtract half a looser for each ace and add half a looser for each queen is equivalent to:
A=5
K=3.33 (unless singleton)
Q=1.67 (unless singleton or doubleton)
Doubleton = 3.33
Singleton = 6.67
Void = 10
9th trump = nothing

[..]

What I would suggest:
- Add a bit for the 9th trump, and reduce the value of shortnesses if you have only an 8-card fit.

The Modified LTC that I'm familiar with subtracts a full loser for every trump starting with the 9th, so this is included. However, I've personally found this to be too aggressive, also because we're essentially doublecounting shape. In addition, I think the fact that a void is 0 losers, a small singleton is 1.5 and a small doubleton is 2.5 makes them worth 10/5/1.67 points respectively, on this scale.
There are also adjustments for known shortage-opposite-shortage, i.e. hand shape duplication, but that's getting well into the territory of 'too complicated to be of any merit, even if it is accurate'.

[jillybean]

DavidKok, on 2025-July-01, 09:54, said:

There are also adjustments for known shortage-opposite-shortage, i.e. hand shape duplication, but that's getting well into the territory of 'too complicated to be of any merit, even if it is accurate'.

I'm glad you ended with that, I was about to say the only you and Helene could work this out at the table. The rest of us are saving mental capacity to remember the opening lead, the contract, discards, partner's signals, inferences from the bidding, counting, table feel and so on.

[thepossum]

blackshoe, on 2025-June-30, 12:29, said:

I agree with your "if…"

This is not in the laws, it's a matter for regulation, and the various Regulating Authorities' regulations differ. The relevant law is Law 40, in particular Law 40A1(b): Each partnership has a duty to make its partnership understandings available to its opponents. The Regulating Authority specifies the manner in which this is done.

Everyone knows including my partner that I make every effort to bid my hand according to its strength and shape and potnetial - I take a very natural nd KISS approach to wht my bids mean
No LTC, no points, nothing else
2 clubs vaguely suggests 8 and half to 9 or more tricks in a major. I pre-empt with similiar well thought out but rather vague criteria
I don't need to bore everyone with my vague but widely used guidelines to most bids
I was happy the other day (as mentioned above) to evaluate a hand as a 3 preempt and not a 4 like most of the field recently - everyone seem to follow certain similar rules. So do I
If my partner tends to have more precise criteria I will impart that information if asked
But reading the above thread and how complicated some implementations of LTC appear to be I use it as a guide occasionally
If my partner opens 1 M and I bid 3M it is fairly obvious what that bid means
- if you analysed such hands I would likely on average have a certain approx number of losers in M - 8 perhaps. Not enough points for GF or any other strong support for M. It would have at least 3 trumps support, vaguely in the area of 8-11 points I guess etc. For some reason not appealing as 1NT bid etc
I can alos dislclose that while notbeing opposed to Bergen that is not what 3M means
I hate too labour a point but Bergen is a strictly set down convention - albeit a little latitude I am sure - but if a partner said I like Bergen I am happy to play Bergen
But LTC is this vague thing you use in trying to estimate your hand's value, not an agreement, system, convention, not the way I use it anyway
It is often the first thing I count lol

[mw64ahw]

This site provides an in-depth discussion of NLTC. It is one that I referred to when first considering using it as an additional tool
Losing-Trick Count - Rules and strategy of bridge card games