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‘Each pleads his cause before a great judge:

the winning cause pleased the gods’ (Lucan A.D. 39-65)

WINNING TRICK COUNT - the Winning Trick estimate of the number of tricks which you and your partner can expect to make in a suit contract is quite simply your joint holding of honour cards (A’s; K’s, and Q’s) added to your combined holding of trumps minus six.

No corrections, no adjustments!

That’s all you need for an exceptionally accurate measure of your partnership prospects, which not only has a significantly broader scope than the Losing Trick Count, but one which also adds a completely new dimension to conventional bridge-hand evaluation, by providing precisely the same Total Trick Count as the Law of Total Tricks.

A procedure, moreover, which can readily be adapted to provide an effective and quite unusually easy bidding aid for that substantial fraction of bridge players who routinely use their point count as an initial measure of their hand strength. On a wide range of hands this enables them to make an immediate forecast of their trick-taking prospects (and in many competitive auctions, those of their opponents) as soon as a prospective trump fit has been established.