NOTICE: This post was originally posted on Medium, but has later been moved to the official World Of Card Games blog to consolidate all posts.
Here’s a screenshot of a hand from a game of Spades that I played at World of Card Games, this week. Check out the scores! There’s a puzzle. What would you bid to win this game?
This is one of my favorite scenarios when playing Spades. Both my team and my opponents are within reach of winning. So we’re probably in the final hand. Both sides need some combination of luck and intelligent bidding to win the game.
In this case, my team has 465 points. The opponents have 472 points. So close! I am last to bid. That means my team is in a stronger position because I’m going to know all the other bids before I have to make my own bid. I like being last to bid! 😃
My left-hand opponent, Atom, bids a reasonable 3. With Ace and King of Spades, he will definitely get 2 tricks. And he’s counting on the Ace of hearts to give him an extra trick. I think that bid makes sense as an opener. He’s also in the worst position. As first to bid, he has no additional information to help him decide whether to underbid or overbid. If anything, he might be a bit cautious in making his bid.
My partner, Optimus Prime, bids 2. At this stage, all I know is that he doesn’t have a very good hand. Too bad, because that may make it difficult for us to win.
However, we got lucky. My right-hand opponent, hitchBot, bid 1. I would argue that this was a mistake. This bid brings their total bid to 4. If they make their bid, they’re going to wind up with a total of 512 points (472 + 4*10). That’s enough to end the game. But there are also plenty of tricks left — 9 extra tricks for our team to take — to help my team beat them. Why 9? Well there are 13 total tricks, and they bid 4, so there are 9 left.
That means that there’s plenty of wiggle room here for me to bid just a little higher and beat their final score. This is why I like bidding last. I just make a judgment call — can I make a bid that’s safe, and that will put my team’s score slightly above the opponent’s score? If so, that’s the bid to make.
In this case, I need to bid something that will put my team above 512 points in order to win the game. If my team bids a total of 5, and then succeeds in taking 5 tricks, we will win the game with 515 points, just squeaking by. So I have to bid at least 3. If I bid 2, my team will lose.
In the end, I wound up bidding 4 to take my team’s total bid to 6 — that’s 1 more than what we needed to win. Why did I do this? I was slightly worried that the other team might try to give us 5 bags. If that happened, we’d roll and lose 100 points. By pushing our total bid to 6, I felt pretty confident that they couldn’t give us 5 bags, although you can never be sure.
If I’d bid 3, our team’s total bid would be 5. To make us roll, the opponent would need to give us 5 bags — so we’d have to take 5 extra tricks! That would mean they’d have to purposefully lose their bid. Many people don’t want to aim for that, even if that means losing the game. Also, ducking tricks is not exactly easy to do. You could accuse me of being overly cautious by bidding 4 in order to avoid a roll, and you’re probably correct.
In the end, my team wound up winning, easily. I was playing against the bots, and they aren’t very clever in their end-game strategy. Too bad! It’s fun to win, but I really prefer the challenge of a smart pair of opponents.
Here’s the hand history for that hand, if you’re curious to see how it played out. What would you have done if you were on the opposing team? If you were in hitchBot’s place, would you have bid nil? Do you think I made a mistake in bidding 4?