the long suits increase the value of the hand. Conversely, honors in the short suits decrease the value of the hand. Intermediate honors increase the value of the hand, say KQJ98 is far more valuable than KQ432 Unsupported honors count less as they have much less chance to win a trick or to promote tricks. The adjustment made is as follows: count 2 HCP instead of 3 for a singleton K count 1 HCP instead of 2 for a singleton Q count 0 HCP instead of 1 for a singleton J or even Jx decrease 1 point the value of unsupported doubleton honor combinations: AJ, KQ, KJ, QJ Distributional adjustments deduct 1 HCP for a 4333 distribution add 1 HCP for having AAAA, i.e., first control in all suits. add 1 point for a good five-card suit (three honors) Unbalanced hands The balanced HCP count loses weight as the distribution becomes more and more unbalanced. Unbalanced hands are divided in 3 groups: one-suited, two-suited and three-suited hands. Three-suited hands are evaluated counting HCP and distributional points, DP. The distributional points show the potential of the hand to take low-card tricks including long-suit tricks or short-suit tricks (ruffing tricks). Opener's DP count are less valuable as responders because usually trumping in the long side does not add tricks to the total number of tricks. Distributional hand values doubleton 1 points Singleton 2 points Void 3 points On the other hand, dummy contributes with additional tricks when declarer ruff with table's trumps. Therefore, the distributional values of dummy shortage, assuming there is good trump support, is: doubleton 1 point singleton 3 points void 5 points Two-suited hands lacking a six-length suit (5422, 5431, 5521, 5530) are evaluated as above. More distributional hands, such as 6511, 6520, 6610, are better evaluated with the method used for the one-suited hands, that is, counting playing tricks. One-suited hands are evaluated according to the number of winners and/or the number of losers in the long suit (AKQ) and the number of winners/losers in the side suit. References Contract bridge bidding