What Are Wasted Values? by Brent Manley. Source: http://www.netplaces.com/bridge
The process of hand evaluation is not intuitive, and many beginning players do not take into account the positional value of their honor cards. To illustrate the point, here’s a simple example of a single suit distributed to all four hands:
Look this over before deciding how many tricks the hand holding the KJ9 will take in the heart suit. If you said none, you are correct. No matter what card is played from the North hand (at the top of the diagram), the player sitting “over” the KJ9 has a winning card to cover it. The situation changes radically if the layout is this way:
Now the hand holding the KJ9 will take two tricks. Only the…Click here to continue reading