„Unfortunately, in practice, it is very difficult to determine the total number of assets. (Strangely, this calculation is often a little easier for defense than for openers. For example, you can usually calculate the total assets with great accuracy when a reliable partner makes a takeaway double of a major suit opening.) Most of the time, however, players can tell exactly how many assets their trump card side has, but not how many opponents have. However, this alone is enough to be able to apply the law of total tricks with almost total certainty. For example, consider the sequence of the second commandment above and assume that the South has four pikes. After overcalling a spade, the partner can count on him for at least five spades or nine spades for his side. Thus, East-West has a maximum of four spades under their 25 cards. In other words, they must have at least eight trumps in one of the three remaining suits. Thus, South can count at least 9 + 8 = 17 tips for the case. So a three-prick bid will likely show a profit and, in the worst case, break even. A similar analysis shows that the situation is completely different when the South has only three pikes, so its camp has a considerable chance to hold only eight of its assets.
In order to reach the total number of 18 turns, it is now necessary for the East-West to hold ten cards in their suit – not impossible, but unlikely. It is much more reasonable to assume that the deal will only bring 16 or 17 rounds in total. Therefore, it is wrong to go beyond both levels; Three pikes must lose or break even. „If we look at competition issues at different levels one by one, we find that the practical rule that suits each individual case can be expressed as a very simple general rule: you are protected by `distribution security` if you bid for as many rounds as your side wins. So with eight trumps, you can bid on both levels with virtually no danger, with nine trumps on all three levels, with ten on all four levels, etc., because you either have a good chance of closing your contract or a good rescue against the enemy contract. This rule applies to almost all levels, up to a small slam (with one exception: it will often pay to compete in a lower rank on all three levels if eight assets are held). Of course, the application of this rule presupposes two conditions: (1) the difference in the number of points between the two sides must not be too great, preferably not greater than 17-23, certainly not greater than 15-25; 2. Vulnerability is equal or favourable. For this rule to work in case of adverse vulnerability, your side must have as many high cards as the opponents (or more). As descendants of whist, the various games of bridge have always had more detailed laws than any other non-sporting game except chess. The Portland Club of London and the Whist Club of New York traditionally became the legislative bodies for rubber auction bridges, played primarily in clubs and private homes.
With the advent of doubles bridge and tournament bridge in the 1930s and 40s, the ACBL and the European Bridge League became dominant in legislation. In 1949, Charles H. Goren of Philadelphia developed a grading method called Point Count, an extension of similar methods proposed as early as 1904 but previously not applicable to more than a fraction of the many hands a bridge player could hold. In other respects, Goren`s system was similar or identical to the methods advocated by Culbertson and the Four Aces. There are a number of bridge conventions that use this principle. For example, Bergen increases after an opening bid of a major (using a 5-card major system): Only a few general principles can be given for the card game, but as far as possible they have been exhaustively covered in the literature of the various bridge games. The ethics of the game allow information to be transmitted only through the card or the card played on a turn. The convention endowed certain sets with generally understood meanings.
The first bridge laws were issued in 1927 by the Knickerbocker Whist Club of New York, but when later that year the Whist Club issued a code, the Knickerbocker laws were withdrawn. The Portland Club issued a codex in 1929. In 1932, representatives of the Portland and Whist clubs met and agreed on the first international code, which was signed by the French Bridge Commission. Since then, with the exception of a 1941 American code (published in 1943), which was published unilaterally because European correspondents were at war at the time of its writing, each code is international, and the 1948 and 1949 revisions were promulgated by the ACBL and the EBL, to which the Whist Club and the Portland Club had ceded their prerogatives. In return, these organizations, along with representative bodies from South America, moved to the newly founded World Bridge Federation (WBF) in 1958. The most recent WBF rules for traditional rubber bridges were adopted in 1993, for dual-contract bridges in 1997 and for Internet gaming in 2001. Tendering systems have occupied the bridge student since the first appearance of the contract bridge. The first system proposed was that of Harold S. Vanderbilt, who developed the game that was successful as a contract bridge. The Vanderbilt Club system required a player with a strong hand to bid on a club, the lowest bid; His partner with a weak hand would offer a diamond and with a strong hand he would make another offer. Despite its technical excellence, the Vanderbilt Club system was not widely accepted. The most successful system of the first 20 years of the contract bridge was developed by Ely Culbertson of New York.
The Culbertson system required a player to evaluate their hand on a calendar of high card combinations called laps of honor, and then bid according to the requirements set based on the number of laps of honor held and the length of the player`s colors. The factors in contractual tendering and bridge systems are: Nevertheless, the general rules, called systems, allow the casual player in most cases to imitate the expert standard. In Whist, the precursor game, science was poor; in Bridge whist it better; In Auction Bridge, the best players were proficient, but the game`s literature never reflected best practices; In Contract Bridge, the most popular systems, when strictly followed, have achieved an efficiency of almost 90%.