Players can also bid nil, anticipating that they will not win any tricks in the round. Don't confuse the rank of a card with its risk - if you hold T8642 of a suit, you are guaranteed to be able to duck any lead, so the ten is not risky at all. Each player declares a number of tricks as their bid for the round.This gives them the information they need to conserve their spades to cover your long spade suit. It might also be reasonable to consider the 7D 'safe enough' and to play the 6C, because you are communicating to your partner that you're confident you can duck any lead below a 6 - (there are only 5 other cards in that suit, and you hold 5432). For example, consider the hand, and hearts is led, the 7D might be the highest-risk card, since you cannot duck a lower lead in that suit. In most of the BGA variants, making a nil is so rewarding that many games turn on a team taking sufficient advantage of their nil opportunities. When considering a nil bid vs another bid, consider the leverage of that bid.The players partner can make a normal bid. If a player bets nil, wins no hands, AND their team member wins no hands, then the player alone (team member is scored separately) wins 100 points. (Yes, we could point people to Google, but when I tried, most results weren't for the variations we play on BGA, or they gave questionable advice in a format that doesn't give room for people to ask questions or discuss nuance.)įor example, here's a brain dump of my thinking about nil bids, hopefully at a level consumable by players of all levels:ĭisclaimer: these thoughts are in no way authoritative or comprehensive - these are just some opinions informed by my experience playing and talking about the game with others. Nil Bidding - Objective for Nil bidder is to make no books during the hand. Do people know if there's a good general-purpose location where Spades conventions or strategies are discussed? It would be great to be able to point new/inexperienced Spades players to a place where they can read up to become stronger players. The 'Strategy Tips' section for Spades has some interesting probability calculations for advanced players to think about, but it doesn't necessarily proscribe what to do with that information. A Spades bidding algorithm that is superior to recreational human players and to publicly available bots, and attached to any playing algorithm that beats.

Going nil in spades