[0Filou]

I think that you will find the answers to your questions in the book : Optimal Hand Evaluation (recently published by Master Point Press and available for ordering through Baron Barclay or the Bridge World on-line bookstore). In that book, the author clearly identifies all the flaws of existing point count methods and demonstrates the vast superiority of the Optimal point count. It should become "The Standard" in Hand Evaluation point count.
Oh, by the way, it also shows that the Banzai point count has no statistical validity whatsoever and is actually quite absurd. Good reading !

[Zelandakh]

blackshoe, on 2012-June-26, 07:45, said:

Hm. Okay, that seems to make sense.

Interesting. I took Statto's 'pure value' numbers and normalized them to 4 and 5 for the ace. Got:

A-4.000, K-2.817, Q-1.686, J-0.889, 10-0.361 = not much different from the pure numbers, unsurprisingly.
A-5.000, K-3.522, Q-2.107, J-1.111, 10-0.451 = this looks to me like a 5-4-2-1-1/2 count, and a 50 point deck. But I probably have no clue what I'm talking about.

I realise this was posted in 2012 but, as it was resurrected, here is the full set of normalised values for K=3, A=4 and A=5:-


Card Pure. All.. Pure K3..... All K3...... Pure A4..... All A4...... Pure A5..... All A5
A... 4.005 4.276 4.2591279688 4.6461427019 4.0000000000 4.0000000000 5.0000000000 5.0000000000
K... 2.821 2.761 3.0000000000 3.0000000000 2.8174781523 2.5827876520 3.5218476904 3.2284845650
Q... 1.688 1.574 1.7951081177 1.7102499095 1.6858926342 1.4724041160 2.1073657928 1.8405051450
J... 0.890 0.837 0.9464728820 0.9094530967 0.8888888889 0.7829747428 1.1111111111 0.9787184284
T... 0.361 0.365 0.3839064162 0.3965954364 0.3605493134 0.3414405987 0.4506866417 0.4268007484
9... 0.173 0.158 0.1839773130 0.1716769286 0.1727840200 0.1478016838 0.2159800250 0.1847521048
8... 0.061 0.030 0.0648706133 0.0325968852 0.0609238452 0.0280636109 0.0761548065 0.0350795136

Edit, and extended also for A=6 and K=4:-

Card Pure A6..... All A6...... Pure K4..... All K4......
A... 6.0000000000 6.0000000000 5.6788372917 6.1948569359
K... 4.2262172285 3.8741814780 4.0000000000 4.0000000000
Q... 2.5288389513 2.2086061740 2.3934774903 2.2803332126
J... 1.3333333333 1.1744621141 1.2619638426 1.2126041289
T... 0.5408239700 0.5121608980 0.5118752216 0.5287939152
9... 0.2591760300 0.2217025257 0.2453030840 0.2289025715
8... 0.0913857678 0.0420954163 0.0864941510 0.0434625136

[MaxHayden]

Zelandakh, on 2020-April-06, 15:05, said:

I realise this was posted in 2012 but, as it was resurrected, here is the full set of normalised values for K=3, A=4 and A=5:-

That was helpful. Do you have a stats package with a double-dummy solver set up that you could run a full test on the reliability of a few different count methods? The Darricades book recently referenced contains a ton of information and the ultimate list of adjustments is fairly complex. So I wonder how much of an improvement it provides over TSP or BUMRAP, and specifically, which elements provide the most bang-for-the-buck. I don't think people will be using it at the table any time soon, but it's good from a bidding system design standpoint to know what hands are or aren't statistically similar.

Everything passes the "gut-check", but I haven't had a chance to do something rigorous. My understanding is that the author does not have a formal statistical background and got his results by manually checking something like 8000 hands. So I'd be interested in seeing a computerized validation of his results. For better or for worse, the current situation has left me swamped with work. So I keep putting off testing it.

I discussed this back last year when I first got a copy of the books in question. The person going around bumping threads to mention it should have just posted there. They are giving a promising book a bad impression by doing a bunch of thread resurrections.