Topic summary
High card points
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Hand evaluation.
High card points
First published in 1915 by Bryant McCampbell in Auction Tactics (page 26), the 4-3-2-1 count for honours was not established by computer analysis (as is sometimes rumoured) but was derived from the game Auction Pitch. Although 'Robertson's Rule' for bidding (the 7-5-3 count) had been in use for more than a dozen years, McCampbell sought a more "simple scale of relative values. The Pitch Scale is the easiest to remember. (Those ... who have played Auction Pitch will have no difficulty in recognizing and remembering these values.)"