Tip for assessing your hand

Try to look beyond your high-card point count when assesing the value of your hand.

Exercise: 

You pick up these 10 point hands (that's the average point count). Would you say they were promising (P), barren (B) or in-between (I).

Answer:

1. B. Yucky barren 4333 shape with no tens and nines. Trick-taking will be tough.

2. P. Lovely 5431 shape, three possible trump suits with the two longer ones being the higher-scoring majors. Also, those major-suit tens look pretty good yet count for no high cards. Really a great 10-count.

3. I. Reasonable hand, some useful shape and intermediates. But no sequential honours and the five-card diamond suit is not that great.