Archive for the ‘Spades’ Category

Best to keep mouth shut …

Saturday, May 8th, 2010

I was playing regular spades and had a pard who decided I wasn’t playing right.  Why? Because the opponents were in the lead by 100 points and had 9 bags.   The total bid was 11. My bid was 1 based on having just 1 heart and the K, Q of clubs and 1 spade, the 4.  Clubs worried me because I had 5 with the 6 as low so didn’t want to risk a nil but wasn’t sure I would even get 1 out of it. Thus I was actually bidding on the fact that I had just 1 heart. I the King of hearts as the loner and so I led it right off the bat and took the trick. I figured my partner had the Ace. So I led the Q of clubs and West snagged it with the Ace then led the Ace of hearts. Hmmmmmm I grabbed it with the 4 of spades.  Then led back the King of clubs fully expecting it to get cut.  My partner let it go by, he was out. But then he commented “What are you doing? You bid 1″.  I didn’t reply but he took realized that they had over bid and were trying to play the bag game too. 

We set them and there they were, in a very familiar scenario, suddenly behind with 9 bags.  I let my pard know that he shouldn’t question my playing. :)

Next hand we nailed their bag and it looked like smooooth sailing to the win.

But it got worse. The next hand I had 3 diamonds, king high. The A of clubs and the A of hearts. 3 spades with J high.  So I bid 3.  Pard bid 1. They bid, being baggers, team 6.   My A of hearts flew. Then I played my A of clubs and it got cut. Opp then led the Ace of diamonds and lo and behold, his pard was out of diamonds. I was screwed.  I tried to fudge my tricks in there, hoping my partner had underbid. No such luck. We took 2 tricks (pard’s only trick was A of Spades.  His only spade.) they took 11 on a 6 bid.

We were now at 396 to their 425. 

They did a team 6 bid. Hmmmm. My hand could take 1 and my pard was bidding 4.  So I went for it. Nil. My pard then said the dumbest thing. “A nil won’t win it for us, you should have bid”  I replied “For 1, a nil IS a bid. Second, it WILL win it for us. 3rd even if it didn’t win it for us it would put us in the lead” .  The opps thought they were being clever when they ran him out of spades.  Too bad I only had 1 spade so I was able to dump that pesky Ace of clubs and a few other high cards and make my nil.  We won. Pard said “You are such a bad player it was only luck we won” then he left before waiting for a reply. sigh.  Yup. I’m so lucky that I have an 80% win rate with total strangers.

He was feeling bad for questioning everything I did and then seeing I was right.

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Never Give Up

Sunday, April 18th, 2010
I am always amazed at how people will just give up on a game when there is still hope. Especially if the other team is stretching for the win.
I was recently in a game where it seemed hopeless especially since my pard was pretty clueless.  She had already missed a chance to set on one hand and had been set needlessly on 2 others. She was so afraid of taking bags she was dumping points before bags were even an issue in the game or in a hand.
So there we were with the score 234 to 428 and she left the game so I got a bot. Actually it was for the best I think. The opponents went for the win and bid team 8. Big mistake. Of course I had lured them into it by bidding low. I was going for either the bags or the set and they took the bait. Remember. Bid your hand unless you are bluffing to get the opps to do something like this.
They had to think about it.

I am always amazed at how people will just give up on a game when there is still hope. Especially if the other team is stretching for the win.
I was recently in a game where it seemed hopeless especially since my pard was pretty clueless.  She had already missed a chance to set on one hand and had been set needlessly on 2 others. She was so afraid of taking bags she was dumping points before bags were even an issue in the game or in a hand.So there we were with the score 234 to 428 and she left the game so I got a bot. Actually it was for the best I think. The opponents went for the win and bid team 8. Big mistake. Of course I had lured them into it by bidding low. I was going for either the bags or the set and they took the bait. Remember. Bid your hand unless you are bluffing to get the opps to do something like this. They had to think about it.  Take a chance on bagging out or push their luck?

They opted to push their luck and it backfired.  We (Le Bot N Me) set them.  Funny thing was they had a solid 7 bid.  They should have bid their hands and not done any stretching. They were far enough ahead to not worry about the bags. They should have just resigned themselves to the possibility of being set on bags and still having a good lead but with no bags.

We had bid low, a 4 bid. So with the set we now had 6 bags.  276 – 348.  The opps were following a set pattern now. Panic had set in. They could smell victory and it was slipping away.  What do you do in that case? NIL! Not.  Actually the nil was risky but doable.   We bid team 6 and they went nil 4.  Lots of baggies in there for the nil to take.

Well. Actually they took the nil and all the bags.  So now the score was 336 – 390.  Still looking good for them.  Then the dealer smiled on me.  Bot n me got a 9 hand.  I thought about pushing it to 10 (I was bidding 2nd on our team) but resisted, luckily.  They bid a team 3.  We got our 9 exactly and they got 4.  Score now 426-421.  Oh my.  The sprint for the finish line was on.

Next hand was a nail biter.  Both bid team 6 and made it.  We took the bag.  487-481.   We were bidding first and did a team 6.  They either had to bid a team 7 (and make it) or go nil or go low and try to bag us.  What they didn’t know was that I had bid high betting they would go for the bags.  Sure enough they bid a team 4.   They were so excited when I took a trick with a 6 of hearts.  I was going “WHEW! Got mine” because that was the last trick I took. If they had not let me have it by sluffing, I was set.  We took 2 bags and the win.

So never just give up. Unless you are a crappy player which my pard was.  Should have known. She had over 4000 games and was only rated 1920. (MSN Zone).  I, on the other hand, now have a 6 game winning streak going (after having a pard bid 13 and leave) rated over 1900 (just tried to look but the zone seems to be down) with just 31 games under my belt.

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