THE WINNING TRICK COUNT

A NOVEL ACCURATE  AND VERY SIMPLE BRIDGE-HAND EVALUATION PROCEDURE *

Harry Freeman
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A full account of the Winning Trick Count is provided in the two linked attachments, which are described below:
ATTACHMENT 1. This is simply intended to provide an outline introduction to the Winning Trick Count. It describes the main features of this novel evaluation procedure and, in particular, it shows how it provides an exceptionally effective bidding aid for that substantial fraction of players who routinely use their point count as an initial measure of their hand strength. On a wide range of deals this very simple procedure enables them to make an immediate estimate of their trick-taking prospects (and in many competitive auctions, those of their opponents!) as soon as a prospective trump fit has been established.
ATTACHMENT 2. This provides a much more detailed description of the evaluation procedure. It shows that as well as providing an exceptionally accurate measure of your partnership prospects, the Winning Trick Count has a significantly broader scope than the Losing Trick Count and that it adds a completely new dimension to such forecasting by providing precisely the same Total Trick Count as the Law of Total Tricks on every deal. The account includes a selection of real hands, which illustrate the various features of the Winning Trick Count, and it provides a detailed consideration of its accuracy and its relationship to the more conventional bridge-hand assessment procedures.
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Acknowledgments
I am particularly grateful to Ron Klinger for his helpful and constructive commentary on an earlier draft of the Winning Trick Count and I am especially indebted to Clive Keep for his advice and his quite invaluable assistance in establishment of this website. I would also like to express my thanks to John Gunn, Alan Parker and Bert Ramsden for their helpful and constructive comments on the Winning Trick concept.

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*  The term Winning Trick Count has also been used to describe variants of the conventional Losing Trick Count but these are not related to the evaluation procedure which is described below.