[NickRW]

helene_t, on Sep 15 2008, 10:09 AM, said:

If you treat all of them as 12 points then IMHO you are misinforming....

OTOH if you treat them as 12/11/10, or 11/11/11, or 10/11/12 then you are not biased relative to literal MW counts, you just have a judgment with which some would disagree. I think it would be overkill to make statements on the CC about method of hand evaluation but maybe it depends on the setting.

Well, speaking personally, the first is nowhere near worth a 12-14 1NT, the second is a better than average 11 - but questionable as to whether it is worth an upgrade to 12. The best of the hands, to my way of thinking, is the last and I probably would be tempted to open it if playing 12-14 - though in real life I actually wouldn't with my regular partners as we actually play it more like 12+ to 15- (not being a convert to the modern school of opening balanced 11s - but that is question of system, rather than hand valuation).

My problem with my own methods is that, although I think my judgement better than average on this sort of question, it gets old ladies upset/confused. Some of the ones that have been around pointedly wonder aloud if they should call the director about it. I say, "you're welcome, I announded my parner's NT as 'about a good 12 to bad 15' and precise details are on the card of how we evaluate a hand - which you didn't bother to look at - plus the Orange book quite explicitlly states you do not have to count points by HCP". This usually shuts them up. I just wish I didn't have to - or that bridge teachers would spend more time bothering to teach the basics of hand valuation - or that NBOs wouldn't say you can use other methods and then define requirements for bids using HCP despite themselves.

</grump mode>

Nick

[hatchett]

JEC is well known as a pretty conservative bidder, I imagine his partners are fitting into his style.

Some of them I think are pretty strange downgrades eg A9x A98 Kxx AT9x

[inquiry]

hatchett, on Sep 15 2008, 11:13 AM, said:

JEC is well known as a pretty conservative bidder, I imagine his partners are fitting into his style.

Some of them I think are pretty strange downgrades eg  A9x A98 Kxx AT9x

Similar to that one were most often opened 1NT....

Matter of fact the large majority of 15 point hands they DID open 1NT, I showed all the ones they did not, and then a representative sample of the ones they did open 1NT.

It is the 18 hcp and 4333 that they devaluated and opened 1NT on.