The Result of a Game Set in Spades

Video Transcript

The result of a set is what I just touched on previously in the last segment and I'll go into it even a little bit further. Now we talked about this thing called the swing. The word swing has nothing to do with the word playground and has nothing to do with dancing. It has to do with the loss of points versus the gain of points, and again if it's a low level bid it's really not going to matter too much, it's not going to hurt you too much. Any bids from say, two because, if you each bid one, that's the most even a two bid can split. If your bid is combined then you're bidding one trick and you're bidding one trick. Well, a couple of my friends said if you can bid one you should bid nil. Oh really? If you got the ace of spades are you going to bid nil? If you've got the ace and a jack of clubs are you going to bid a nil? So the point is that the set is what pretty much decided the hands. Now another thing that I tell all of my partners to do and I advise people to do is if the bid comes around to fourth seat again, let's look at this scenario. This is you here and you are the dealer. This person over here bids a three, this person bids a five, and this person bids a one. You have a hand that looks like you've got four tricks, you're pretty sure of taking four tricks. You might even have ace, king, queen, jack of spades and nothing else. Do you push it to thirteen? Absolutely, no, no,no, no, no unless there is a bag situation where toward the end of the game you're risking going out by taking a bag, never, never, never push the bid to thirteen in fourth seat unless the score clearly dictates that. The reason for that is, you're partner has put up a big old five if you had all those spades; he's bidding five on side suits. If by chance somebody comes in and trumps one of his five tricks and you only have four you're not going to be able to pick him up because, you already bid the four that you expected to take. So again, the game really, clearly focuses on avoiding the sets and the impact of being set. So, safety in contracts, safety in bidding, and particularly when you're bidding numerical bids, remember the average bid of a hand is eleven tricks. So when you start pushing it to twelve, when you start pushing it to thirteen, then you're taking full responsibility, you're telling your partner I probably have two extra tricks. So again, bid slightly conservatively.

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