Bidding in depth
A way to value a hand for a suit contract by counting its losers rather than its high-card points.
High-card points measure one thing well, the strength of your honours, but they say nothing about a good trump fit or a short suit, both of which win tricks. The Losing Trick Count asks a different question: in a suit contract, how many tricks might you actually lose?
You count suit by suit, looking only at the top three cards of each suit. A suit can never have more than three losers: after three rounds you are either out of cards or trumping.
Add the four suits together. A typical opening hand comes to about seven losers; a strong hand fewer, a weak one more.
The count becomes useful once you have a fit and can add your losers to partner’s. The rule BidMaestro uses (it calls it the Rule of 24) is:
Expected tricks = 24 − (your losers + partner’s losers). Subtract six, and that is the level you can bid to.
Two ordinary opening hands, seven losers each, make fourteen: 24 − 14 = 10 tricks, game in a major. Put a shapely five-loser hand opposite a seven-loser one and you reach 24 − 12 = 12 tricks, a small slam.
The count is a suit-contract tool. In notrump there is no trump suit to stop the defenders’ long cards, so losers do not translate into a level the same way.
When your side declares a suit contract, the review screen prints the Rule of 24 estimate above the analysis: the tricks your combined losers expect, and the level that implies. Read it against the contract you actually reached — if it says 4♠ and you stopped in 2♠, the losing-trick count is telling you the hand was worth more than the points alone suggested. (On a notrump deal it still shows your combined losers but does not turn them into a level.)
The same thinking runs quietly through the app’s own bidding: it revalues for a fit, accepts a Bergen raise, or drives toward slam on a low losing-trick count even when the high-card points look ordinary.
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