
Spade Article - Counting Losers Part 2
Counting Losers – Part 2 The concept of setting up one hand When it comes to counting losers, the single most confusing aspect is the idea of “setting up” one of the hands and not the other. Since this is the concept that throws most students, this entire article will be devoted to it. Consider the following hand: If we counted losers like we counted winners (just looking at each suit and assessing), when we looked at this hand, we would count twenty-six losers: six in diamon

Diamond Article - Part one of Assessing Distributional Hands
Hands fit into categories: I’ve a minimum for what I’ve bid, I’ve an intermediate hand, I’ve enough for game, I’m interested in slam, or I’m slam forcing. These categories are how we decide how high to bid. Balanced hands (much as we hate them) are very easy to assess. They draw their strength entirely from their high cards, so we simply add up the HCP total and slot it into the appropriate point range, and we know how high to bid. Distributional hands derive their strength f