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.