#1: Point Count
The deck of 52 cards contains 16 "face" cards - 4 Aces, 4 Kings, 4 Queens and 4 Jacks. Each face card, or "Honor Card", is assigned a point value, as displayed in the table to the right. Each deck of cards contains 40 Honor Card Points (HCPs).
The point count of the hand is simply the number of the Honor Card Points (HCPs) in the hand.
| Honor Card Points (HCPs) |
|---|
| Face Card | HCPs |
| Ace | 4 |
| King | 3 |
| Queen | 2 |
| Jack | 1 |
Why Point Count is Important
The goal of the game is for the partnership to take as many of the 13 tricks as possible. Having many honor cards enables the partnership to win many tricks. The point count of a hand is an indicator of the amount of honor cards, and is an indicator of the ability to win tricks. A hand with a high point count is a strong hand that can win many tricks.
You know the HCPs of your hand, and you want to know the HCPs of your partner's hand so you can determine the combined partnership HCPs. The combined partnership HCPs is an indicator of how many tricks a partnership can win. From statistical/actuarial analysis of millions and millions and millions of games, a partnership with a combined point count of
25 HCPs will win
9 or 10 of the 13 available tricks.
You and your partner can not simply tell each other out loud how many combined HCPs the two of you have. That is illegal table talk. Consequently, you use the bidding process to transmit to each other the relative strengths (point counts) of your hands.
Other bidding systems also use HCPs to evaluate a hand. But they are also concerned with where the HCPs are located, that is which suit contains the most HCPs. At this point in the bidding, the Standard American Yellow Card bidding system is only concerned with the total HCPs of the hand - not where they are located. SAYC is a simpler bidding system.