How to Count Points in a Bridge Hand
The first and foremost step towards learning to play bridge is to be able to evaluate your hand’s strength by counting the number of points that you have in your hand at any given time during the game. If you are good at mathematics, learning the points system should be as easy as pie. However, you will have to put in a little extra effort understanding the points system if mathematics was not one of your favourite subjects at school. Here is how you can learn to count points in a hand while playing bridge.
Instructions
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1
Count one point for each Jack, two points for each Queen, three points for each King and four points for each Ace in your bridge hand at the start of the game. Only face cards (King, Queen, Jack) and Aces contribute to the initial point count.
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2
Shortness of a particular suit in your bridge hand can get you points. You get four points for having no cards in a particular suit. For having one card, you will get three points. For having two cards, you will get two points and so forth. Make sure that you do not count distribution points towards the total number of points in your hand until a particular suit has been mutually agreed upon by you and your partner while bidding.
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3
Just like shortness, length of a particular suit is also taken into consideration when counting points in a bridge hand. Add one point to your bridge hand if you have 5 cards of a particular suit. Add two points if the number of cards in a particular suit in your bridge hand is six and so forth. As before, distribution points calculated due to the length of a suit are not to be counted until you and your partner have agreed upon a suit while bidding.
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4
Finally, deduct one point from the total if there is no suit in your bridge hand which can be counted for shortness or length.
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5
Make sure that you do not count for either shortness or length and the face cards in a particular suit at the same time. To understand this point better, consider that you have Queen of Spades in your bridge hand. Assume that the total number of Spade cards including the Queen is 5. Do not make the mistake of counting 2 points for the Queen of Spades and counting 1 point for length of the suit. Instead, you can only count for the face card (Queen of Spades in this case) and not the shortness or length of the suit (Spades in this case).
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6
The total number of points in your bridge hand will help determine if you can make a bid or not. Generally, 12 points or more are required if you wish to open the bidding in the first two seats. However, for third and fourth seats, bidding can be opened if a player has 11 points or more. For responding to a bid opened by an opponent, you will need 10 points or more. The minimum number of points required if the bid was opened by your partner is 6.
