THE SIDE IN OFFENSE

“Finally, like Malherbe, Jean-René Vernes came along…” and, thanks to him, knowledge of competitive auctions took a quantum leap! His discovery of the Law of Total Tricks, according to which the total number of trumps on both sides determines the total number of possible tricks, was universally acclaimed. (It was popularized in Larry Cohen’s To Bid or Not to Bid.) Thus, 9 Spades in North-South + 10 Hearts in East-West make 19 Total Tricks: if the East-West pair makes 10 tricks in Hearts, the North-South pair will make 9 in Spades and vice versa, which makes it possible to formulate a simplistic practical rule: “In competitive bidding, safely reach the level corresponding to your total number of trumps”. An illustration: