The most important attribute of the basic Honour-Card version of the Winning Trick Count described in the previous chapters is its simplicity. It merely requires an estimate of the combined number of honour cards and the length of the trump suit in order to provide an accurate evaluation of the partnership trick-taking prospects

However, as I noted earlier, the problem, which you face when you are actually aiming to make such an evaluation at the bridge table is that the only cards that you can see are those in your own hand and any further judgements that you then make about the strength and shape of your partner’s hand must be based upon such additional information as may emerge from the bidding.

Notwithstanding this constraint, players do of course, have to make an assessment and - as the very extensive and successful use of the Losing Trick Count has shown – they are assisted in this task by the detailed listings of guidance on the Loser expectancy for a wide range of possible bids and responses which are provided in accounts of the evaluation procedure.

And in precisely the same way, it would be relatively easy to provide similar listings of Winning Trick guidance for a wide range of possible bids and responses. For example, an opening bid by partner will normally correspond to at least five winners (or six, if the bid is 1H or 1S and you are playing a five-card major system) in that suit. If you judge that you have a fit you simply need to add your Winning Trick Count (your holding of honour cards added to your holding of trumps minus three) for an immediate assessment of your partnership trick-taking prospects.

On the other hand, as we shall see below, it is much easier at the bridge table to use the Point-Countversion of the Winning Trick Count.

The High Card (or Milton Work) Point Count, which is very widely used, is based on the holding of honour cards, where:

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Ace= 4

King= 3

Queen = 2

Knave = 1

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Its success and its popularity undoubtedly rest on the fact that it is easy to use and it works.

Conversely, the basic High Card Point Count also has the serious weakness that it consistently underestimates the trick-taking prospects of the substantial and important fraction of hands, which are weaker, but shapelier.

This shortcoming - which means that it has only a restricted value in a wide range of competitive bidding situations - is broadly recognised and the proposed solution, which is given detailed attention at an early stage in most accounts of bridge bidding systems, is to extend the basic point-count estimation by making some additional allowance for the quality and the distribution of the cards.

However, the problem, which this poses, is that these correction procedures inevitably complicate the evaluation and it is unfortunate, moreover, that this consensus about the nature of the problem is not mirrored by any corresponding agreement regarding its resolution. Thus, while the broad range of proposals for revision of the High Card Point Count all look sensible and balanced, when considered in isolation they have the drawback that they are all quite limited in scope and when they are compared it can be seen that their recommendations are often inconsistent.

The Point-Count version of the Winning Trick Count, which is defined below corrects this situation.

It is based on the well-established evaluation presumption that three points correspond on average to one honour-card trick (A’s, K’s and Q’s) and it is distinguished by the fact that, as soon as a prospective trump fit has been established it provides the players with an immediate and unusually accurate assessment of their prospects (and in many cases those of their opponents) on a wide range of deals:

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The Winning Trick Point-Count 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 point-count tricks added to your combined holding of trumps minus six.

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The only proviso is that before assessing the prospectsin this way we first deduct two points from the partnership total, to allow for our probable average holding of two knaves, which we do not wish to include in our estimation of winners.

For example, if we have a partnership count of twenty points (half of the total of forty) this would correspond to a corrected count of eighteen and hence a holding of six point-count tricks. And similarly, of course, these twenty points would correspond, on average, to a holding of six honour cards (half of the total of twelve A’s, K’s and Q’s).

Or, more generally – and as we can see from the table below - if we have a typical combined holding somewhere in the range of 10 - 30 points, the number of point-count tricks that we can expect to make if we play in a suit contract is:

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Just remember that twenty points are likely to correspond to a holding of six point-count tricks and we find that it really is easy to estimate our prospects in a wide variety of bidding situations.

For example, with a partnership total of around twenty three points combined with a nine-card fit in one of the major suits, we can judge that that we have a good chance of making game - ten tricks, made up of our estimated seven point-count tricks plus three trump tricks (a nine-card suit minus six).

And similarly with a ten-card major fit we should consider the prospect of a possible game, even if we only have a combined count of around twenty points.

But, what is equally important is that this quite uncomplicated point-count evaluation procedure applies just as accurately to those deals where our opponents clearly have the balance of strength. Thus with only around seventeen points, but again with a nine-card suit, we can see that we are still likely to make eight tricks if we should compete and win the auction (five point-count tricks plus three trump tricks).

This is illustrated in the table, which shows the application of this estimation of the trick-taking prospects to a substantial fraction of typical bridge hands (those with a total point count in the range 10 – 30 combined with a trump fit of 8, 9 or 10 cards).

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Total Point Count	Expected Point-Count Tricks	WINNING TRICK COUNT Expected Point-Count Tricks plus Trump Tricks
		8 Card trump fit= 2 Trump Tricks	9 Card trump fit = 3 Trump Tricks	10 card trump fit = 4 Trump Tricks
28 29 30	9	11	12	13
25 26 27	8	10	11	12
22 23 24	7	9	10	11
19 20 21	6	8	9	10
16 17 18	5	7	8	9
13 14 15	4	6	7	8
10 11 12	3	5	6	7

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Thus, if we apply this table to the deal below we see that N/S with 24 points and a 9-card trump fit have a Winning Trick estimate of 10 tricks; while E/W with a point count of 16 combined with a 9-card trump fit have an estimate of 8 tricks.

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And similarly, if we compare the two versions of the Winning Trick Count for a much larger range of hands we will see that in most cases they provide precisely the same forecast of the trick-taking prospects.

The analysis of a large number of real bridge contracts, which is described in PART 2, confirms the validity of this seemingly elementary approach to hand evaluation. It shows that in most bidding situations – and especially in competitive auctions – the Point-Count Winning Trick table above provides a simple and accurate forecast of the partnership trick-taking prospects.

But, in addition, as we shall see in the next chapter we can redefine the Point-Count Winning Trick procedure to provide us with a bidding tool which is just as precise but which is even easier to use at the bridge table.