Correct contract bridge / by E.V. Shepard ; including the official Laws of contract bridge adopted by the Whist Club, New York, and by all the leading clubs in America.

XXIV
DETERMINING PROBABLE
RESULTS
M ANY shrewd players sense whether the majority of hands possess game prospects. I
have yet to meet one able to distinguish between the
hands that barely exceed game probabilities and
those that fall just short of such prospects. The determination of game probabilities is really absurdly
simple, provided you employ only the method of ob.
taining the true values of hands given in Chapter
IV.
Outside of Bridge, naivete often charms, but the
artless partner who expects to obtain correct results,
without employing fractions of tricks, belongs in
Arcadia.
During the Victorian period, Bridge Whist commenced to supersede Whist. The newer game required either the dealer or his partner to name the
declaration; there was no competitive bidding.
Knowing nothing of card values, players of Bridge
Whist resorted to rules framed by mathematicians,
guiding the namer of the make to choose between
no-trump, a suit call, or naming spades on an impotent hand. The rules followed were not intended
to show the number of tricks that could be won;
they were designed only as props for players hopeI9I