LAW of TOTAL TRICKS or abbreviated: THE LAW

A few years ago Larry Cohen has written several books about the "Law of Total Tricks ". The title of his first book, which was a bestseller (in bridge community) right from the start, is "To Bid or Not to Bid". Together with his partner he has recorded his experience with THE LAW, as he calls it in his books. He has analyzed many games played on world championship tournaments and the like, in order to test THE LAW.
From his experience and from his extensive exploring he concludes that THE LAW is nearly always true.
Some other great bridge players do not agree with him. They point to examples of tournament games where THE LAW did not work.

It appears THE LAW surely never can be proved, because it really does not work always. As an simple individual, who only studied a very small part of everything that was ever written about the subject, I believe THE LAW is usually true, like many other codes of practice in bridge, and that therefore it should be applied always, when the conditions are relevant.
Larry Cohen has convinced me of the "commonly-correctness " of THE LAW. I cannot prove this either. I even cannot see a mathematical relation between quantities which are governed by the law. I simply believe in it.

If you've never heard of all this before, you'll probably wonder what I am talking about. Well I've come to the point where I wanted to tell you this.
THE LAW is not a convention, but it is yet a thing which may guide you to take the right decision in competitive situations during the auction period. THE LAW can tell you when to double and when to proceed bidding. THE LAW predicts the scores, you can make, if you play your suit and also it can predict the score you get, when the opponent's would play their suit. These predictions are, that's typical to predictions, never exact, and, as seen before, even not ever true.
In MAF we shall apply THE LAW and treat it as a convention to be applied in all relevant competitive bidding situations. Before giving the text of the law we will first show how you must analyze these competitive situations.

If you're in doubt about what action should be taken, overcall?, pass? or double?, you should try to measure the oddss. In order to do that, you have to gain three quantities:


Now THE LAW says that in competitive situations next rule counts:

the TOTAL number of TRICKS equals the TOTAL number of TRUMPS
in competitive situations.
In formula THE LAW looks like:
TRUMPS(we) + TRUMPS(they) == TRICKS(we) + TRICKS(they)
Through THE LAW's equation TRICKS(they) can be calculated, when you first make estimations of the three remaining quantities. Knowing the numbers of tricks, you may calculate also the scores belonging to the bids, to be done by each pair in order to play their suit.

As long as 'SCORE(we play) > SCORE(they play) ', you should consider bidding as well as double.
When 'SCORE(we play) <= SCORE(they play) ', you should consider a double as an alternative to PASS.

It is always allowable to correct your partner's double when you've good reasons.

However "THE LAW" is no convention, "applying THE LAW" may be, or rather should be, conventional. To prevent problems, when you are on turn after your partner took a long time for applying THE LAW and finally produced a PASS, you should write it on your (yellow) card. Competitive situations at the bridge table are always recognizable by all four players.

On this site, examples of applications of THE LAW will not shown. In the book mentioned above, have a look at the author's own internet site, many interesting (historical) examples of competitive auctions are given. If you are interested to see them, you must read the book. It has been translated in various foreign languages.


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