Wednesday Afternoon Duplicate - Board 18 - Losing Trick Count

Bidding a thin game with confidence is one of the joys of bridge. This hand provides an excellent example of one of the tools we can use to help our judgement in the bidding - the Losing Trick Count.

You should use the LTC in the following circumstances:

1. Your hand is UNBALANCED
2. You have a FIT
3. You are the OPENING partnership

As East, we only have 3 points, but when partner opens 1S we calculate our losing tricks as we fulfill the criteria above.

To work this out, consider each suit in turn. For each of the AKQ we are missing, we count one loser. You can never have more losers in a suit than you have cards. SO East has:

Spades - 3 losers (missing AKQ)
Hearts - 2 losers (missing AK)
Diamonds - 3 losers (AKQ)
Clubs - 1 loser (missing A)

Our total is 9 losers, which as a guideline is what we expect from raising 1 of a suit to 2 of the same suit.

Opener also calculates his losers when he hears of the fit opposite. Here we have:

Spades - 1 loser (missing Q)
Hearts - 1 loser (missing A)
Diamonds - 1 loser (missing A)
Clubs - 2 losers (missing KQ)

Openers total is 5 losers.

Opener then adds together his own number of losers to the expected number of partners losers:

5+9 = 14

and then deducts this total from 18

18-14 = 4

This is the level that he should bid to - 4 spades in this case which we can see makes 10 tricks on a combined 20 points.

Caroline covers this subject in much more detail in her Revise and Play Series on Thursday afternoons. And Andrew has written an excellent booklet on Hand Evaluation & the Losing Trick Count



GOLD CUP NEWS

A little bird tells be of an interesting match tomorrow afternoon - Team Allfrey versus Team Duckworth. Team Allfrey contains Andrew Robson and Alexander Allfrey and Team Duckworth is apparently fielding Nick Boss and Martin Jones. The result may be reported here over the weekend - depending on the outcome!