In contract bridge, the Law of total tricks (abbreviated here as LoTT) is a guideline used to help determine how high to bid in a competitive auction. It is not really a law (because counterexamples are easy to find) but a method of hand evaluation which describes a relationship that seems to exist somewhat regularly. Written by Jean-René Vernes for French players in the 1950s as a rule of thumb, it was first described in English in 1966 International Bridge Academy Annals. It received more notice from appearing in The Bridge World in June 1969. In 1981 Dick Payne and Joe Amsbury, using their abbreviation TNT (Total Number of Tricks), wrote at length about it for British readers. Later, in the US, Marty Bergen and Larry Cohen popularized the approach, using their preferred abbreviation: 'the LAW' (all capitals). It was prefigured in S. J. "Skid" Simon's 1945 book Why You Lose at Bridge in his aphorism "When in doubt, bid one more". Definition LoTT can be stated as follows: The total number of tricks available on a deal is equal to the total number of trump cards both sides hold in their respective best suits, where the total number of tricks is defined as the sum of the number of tricks available to each side if they could choose trumps. As an example, if North-South between them hold nine spades and East-West hold eight clubs, the LoTT says that the total number of tricks available is 17 (9 + 8). Note the LoTT says nothing about how many tricks each side will make; this depends on the split of high card points (HCP) as well as the number of trumps held - if, in the example, the side with eight clubs held all the HCP, they would make all 13 tricks with clubs as trumps - but if the other side could choose spades as trumps, they could well make four tricks (draw trumps and cross ruff) - note 13 + 4 still = 17. When the HCP are fairly evenly split between the two sides, the number of trumps held by each side is a close indicator of the tricks available to each side. This method works on the assumption that for shapely hands, the combined length of the trump suit is more significant than points or HCP in deciding on the level of the final contract. It is