Loser Count for Bidding: Judge Contracts Better

Loser count is generally considered to be a very accurate and useful tool for measuring the strength of your hand. Think of it as an alternative to point count. Importantly, loser count only applies when you have found a fit. Stick to point count if you don't have a fit. 

How does it work? Its fairly simple. 

You have to look at all of your suits. If the suit is 3 or more cards long, you have a maximum of three losers in the suit. So, if you're missing the ace, king and queen in a suit, you count three losers. Intuitively the less losers you have the stronger your hand becomes.

However, if the suit is shorter, we naturally limit our losers to the length of the suit. So if a suit has two cards in it, the most we can lose is the ace and the king. So the queen is actually not important, in fact, if we have a suit that looks like this. 

The spade suit still has two losers (the ace and king). So the queen hasn't really helped the situation much.

Lets look at more examples.

Starting off with no high card points. In this hand, the spade suit has three losers, hearts has one loser, diamonds has three losers, and club suit has two losers. The total is 9 losers.

Now lets add in some high cards.

The above example is the same shape as the previous example. The spade suit has only 1 loser - the king and queen are reducing the loser count nicely. The heart suit has no losers this time. The diamond suit still has 3 losers (Its missing all three of the ace king and queen still. The jack has not changed its loser count). The club suit has 1 loser now. The total is 5 losers.

In the next example, lets show a case where high cards aren't working so well. 

Here the spade suit still has two losers (easy to imagine losing the Ace and King). The heart suit still has three losers, the jack doesn't influence loser count. The diamond suit still has one loser, so the king hasn't helped the loser count there either. The club suit has two losers (the ace and queen). So the total loser count of the hand is 2 + 3 + 1 + 2 = 8.

Lets put this into practice, and see what we can do with these numbers.

An opening hand is typically 7 losers or less. 7 is the golden number to remember here, lucky 7. We also know from bridge, that generally an opening hand opposite an opening hand should generally be in game. Therefore, when we have 7 losers opposite an opening hand, we should be in game. Lets look at some examples

We have an 8 or 9 card spade fit here, so the first criteria is in place (remember, generally don't even think about loser count till you have a fit). We have 2 + 1 + 2 + 2 losers, totalling 7. According to loser count, we have that magical 7 losers opposite an opening hand, so we can bid game. 

This was an example from recent play

Once again, a 7 loser hand opposite an opening hand. That should mean game. Especially since here you might have a 9 card fit (partner typically will have four card support to raise here).

What about this hand

The same auction as above. This time we have 3 + 2 + 1 + 2 losers, totalling 8. Loser count would suggest that the hand is an invite or pass. This seems a bit extreme for people that use point count, since it has 14 points opposite an opening hand. So what do we do? Best is to use both of the tools together. It would be a bit extreme and unconventional to not bid game with 14 points opposite an opening hand, so I would still bid game. Nevertheless, both tools used together (point count and loser count) are powerful. I think the best thing to do is be sensible and always try to do the reasonably normal thing. However, as mentioned at the start, I do think loser count is a VERY strong tool, and one that you can trust as much as point count. 

Where to next

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