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Spades is NOT a Card Game
John (Galt) Strichman is the author of How NOT to Lose at Spades, and can be reached at questions@spadesbook.com.
What?
This month’s article, while closely related to last month’s topic, expands upon the idea of risk and reward. The reason for additional emphasis on this area is because it is the single most important concept that a Spader must learn in order to become a force to be reckoned with in the world of Spades.
It is very hard to win a game if you don’t know what the objective of that game is. Unfortunately, for the majority of Spades players, the objective of the game that they love so dearly is either not fully, or not at all understood.
Spades is NOT a game of cards, but a game of risk/reward management.
Your cards happen to be one of the two primary tools (the other being your bids) that you can use in order to try to manage risk/reward better than the other team, and as a result wind up winning the game much more often than not.
As our slugging star, Shutter the Cutter, has been learning, we see risk/reward management in other games as well. In his sport, a good team plays differently when it has a nice lead in a game than it does when being several runs behind.
Very often, Tiger Woods will go for the green in two on a par five hole, but sometimes he decides to lay up and play it safe. Why?
Well, most often his decision is not strictly based upon some golf-related issue. It is based upon his analysis of what he needs to accomplish (including what he needs to avoid) on the given hole in order to achieve the greater good of winning the match. His objective is to win the war, but not necessarily the battle.
When it comes to Spades, the objective of the game is…
- NOT to make a Nil
- NOT to set the opps
- NOT to avoid taking bags
- NOT to avoid getting set
- NOT to set a Nil
- NOT to bag the opps
- And certainly NOT TO BID YOUR HAND!
The objective in Spades IS to make intelligent risk/reward decisions (which means managing the score of the game as best as possible) given the tools that you have been provided to use.
One late night in my early Spading career, after one of our frequent tournaments, I must have spent over an hour on the phone with my regular pard discussing with her this concept of risk/reward management.
After the call, I turned on the TV to catch ESPN’s late night recap of that day’s match in The America’s Cup sailing contest. I almost fell out of my chair when I heard the ESPN analyst ask Paul Cayard, the skipper of the American entry, what he thought the key would be to winning the contest.
His answer was the following:
“We all have fast boats and good crews. Throughout each race you are presented with risk/reward decisions that have to be made. The team that makes the best risk/reward decisions will win the event.”
His answer had nothing to do with boats, sails, crew experience, financing, or anything else related to sailing. His answer did have everything to do with DECISION MAKING.
Cayard understood that his fate rested, not in his tools, but in how he chose to use his tools.
Exactly the same thing applies to Spades.
Aside from a few late game forced bid situations (which I will get into in future articles), everything in Spades is situational.
Most players decide what to bid based first upon their cards, second upon the bid pattern on the hand, and third (if at all) on the score of the game. This is the exact opposite of the approach used by winning Spaders.
The first consideration when bidding should be the score of the game, the next the bid pattern on the hand, and third and last should be the cards that you have been dealt.
If you ever hear a player say something like…
“I always bid my hand”
“I always try to bag on 10 bids”
“I always try to set on 11 bids”
“I always try to set Nils”
Or any other “always” statement,
that player does not yet understand the true nature of the game, and loses far more games than he should as a result of not being able to see the forest for the 13 trees that he is holding in his hand.
Learning and incorporating this idea of playing Spades based upon a risk/reward orientation as compared to a card based orientation represents, by far, the single biggest hurdle facing most Spaders.
I can’t tell you how many times one of my long-time students has said to me something like the following:
“I know what I was supposed to do, but I just couldn’t force myself to do it,” and then will say something about the cards that he or she was dealt.
Over the next month or so, when you are playing try to focus more on what you are trying to accomplish in the game than on what you could or can accomplish on any given hand, and try to use your tools as “weapons of choice,” rather than as “weapons as dealt.” By doing so, you will take a giant step toward NOT losing at Spades.
Starting next time we will get into specifics regarding the endless risk/reward decisions that we, as Spaders, face, not only on each hand of each game, but frequently on almost every play during a game.
Until then…
Happy Spading!
Galt