[bravejason]

rmnka447, on 2018-August-20, 10:01, said:

Yes, they are, but how much more is a question for debate. Most of the really good players I know start from the basic point count and then use adjectives to characterize the hand -- "poor'. "bad", "nondescript', "decent", "good", "great", etc. They reflect the evaluation of the hand that goes past the point count and reflect the mental evaluation of plus and minus factors that affect hand value. These include positives such as honors working together, intermediates, intermediates working with honors, extra QTs, honors in long suits, or, negatives such as isolated honors (especially dangling Qs or Js), unguarded honors, weak long suits, lack of intermediates, intermediates not working with honors, lack of QTs.

Most often hands will have a combination of plus and minus factors that offset and the rating will be toward the middle of the scale of descriptions. Those hands will be bid normally. But sometimes hands will have lots of positive factors or negative factors that will predominate and the rating will be toward the top or bottom end of the scale. When they are toward the negative and near the bottom point count for an initial bid, the hands will be bid more pessimistically -- don't accept invitations -- or, in the extreme, choose a weaker initial bid. OTOH, when positive and near the top point count for an initial bid, the hands will be bid more aggressively -- invitations accepted, or, in the extreme, choose a stronger initial bid.

...

I agree with all of this.

Point count systems can be made very accurate, but then it becomes complicated and requires a lot of mental effort. I think is better to consider all the factors and then sum up the evaluation in a word or two. I like to use phrases like “minimal”, “invitational”, “full opening bid”, etc.

[0Filou]

I think that you will find the answers to most of the issues/questions raised here in the recently published book : Optimal Hand Evaluation (Master Point Press). In my opinion, It is the most comprehensive book ever published on hand evaluation and the most far-reaching and accurate.

[johnu]

0Filou, on 2020-April-30, 10:29, said:

I think that you will find the answers to most of the issues/questions raised here in the recently published book : Optimal Hand Evaluation (Master Point Press). In my opinion, It is the most comprehensive book ever published on hand evaluation and the most far-reaching and accurate.

Thank you for using this forum to advertise your book. You would do better if you wrote your own review on Amazon.com.

[nige1]

rhm, on 2016-July-20, 05:36, said:

Normalizing can be done in different ways, but I think the right way to normalize for comparison with standard HCP is to normalize so that the sum of the top 5 honors are equal to ten, so that the whole deal remains at 40 points. This gives you the following results:

 A=4.3, K=2 .8, Q=1.6, J=0.9. T=0.4 

Again you see aces are worth more and and quacks are worth less. In suit contracts the spread is higher. I do not know whether somebody has created a point count on this but it could be done fairly easily.

 A=11, K=7. Q=4, J=2, T=1 

This gives you 100 HCP per deck. A king plus a queen equals an ace, and a queen plus a jack and a ten equals a King. Ballpark figures for 3NT would be 62+ HCP combined and 6NT would require 83+ HCP and 7NT 94+ HCP. A 15 to 17 notrump would be 37-42 HCP. A 12-14 notrump would be 30-35 HCP. I am sure this is an improvement over current point count, but I am not sure by how much.

pescetom, on 2018-August-19, 11:07, said:

That reflects the values cited here very precisely, errors of 0% 1% 3% 10% 4% respectively. Compare to

 A=4, K=3, Q=2, J=1, T=0 

which has errors of 0% 14% 25% 40% infinite% respectively. But a good compromise might be to use

 A=3, K=2, Q=1, J=2/3, T=1/3 

which has errors of 0% 3% 12% 10% 22% respectively. That gives 7 points per suit which is easier to calculate mentally than 25 and still a lot more precise than 10. If counting the J and T in thirds is too much of a pain then probably someone can come up with a rule of thumb that assigns half-point range scores to various JT holdings.

Brilliant work by Thomas Andrews, Helene_T, RHM, and Pescetom. My father's Winning Trick Count (WTC) evaluates

 A=1.5, K=1, Q=0.5 

with adjustments for knaves and tens. The numbers are trick estimates but, serendipitously, they agree with Pescetom's simple relative values

[MaxHayden]

johnu, on 2020-April-30, 16:44, said:

Thank you for using this forum to advertise your book. You would do better if you wrote your own review on Amazon.com.

I will add to this further: I had been excited to write a both a forum review and an Amazon review of this book after I had time to test the results against the same type of datasets that were used in previous discussions about other point count systems. I am rapidly losing interest because of this behavior. The author is doing himself a huge disservice.

If he wants to promote the book, he should get involved in the community and actually provide people with helpful answers. Minimally he could link to the point-counting systems thread to help this person find more details. This generic spam is just going to result in no one taking him or the book seriously.