Losing-Trick Count

In the card game contract bridge, the Losing-Trick Count (LTC) is a method of hand evaluation used in situations where a trump suit has been established and shape and fit are more significant than high card points (HCP) in determining the optimum level of the contract. The method is not suitable for notrump or misfit hands; also, the trump suit must be at least eight cards in length with no partner holding less than three.

Based on a set of empirical rules, the number of "losing tricks" held in each of the partnership's hands is estimated and their sum deducted from 24; the result is the number of tricks the partnership can expect to take when playing in their established suit, assuming normal suit distributions and assuming required finesses work about half the time.

The origins of the Losing Trick Count (LTC)—without that name—can be traced back at least to 1910 in Joseph Bowne Elwell's book Elwell on Auction Bridge wherein he sets out, in tabular form, a scheme for counting losers in trump contracts similar to the basic counting method given below.

The term "Losing Trick Count" was originally put forward by the American F. Dudley Courtenay in his 1934 book The System the Experts Play (which ran to at least 21 printing editions). Among various acknowledgments, the author writes: 'To Mr. Arnold Fraser-Campbell the author is particularly indebted for permission to use material and quotations from his manuscript in which is described his method of hand valuation by counting losing tricks, and from which the author has developed the Losing Trick Count described herein.'

The Englishman George Walshe and Courtenay edited the American edition and retitled it The Losing Trick Count for the British market; first published in London in 1935, the ninth edition came out in 1947. Subsequently, it has been republished by print-on-demand re-publishers.

The LTC was also popularised by Maurice Harrison-Gray in Country Life magazine in the 1950s and 1960s.

In its original British edition of years before, it had not been very lucidly presented and it seemed to suffer from a certain wooliness of definition of some of its concepts... With the blessing of Mr. Courtenay, Gray sharpened up the definitions, plugged some holes in the logic and made the whole conception intelligible to the average player.

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