After giving a couple threads about bidding the score and how to define what an "End Game" situation is, let's go over situations now where both teams have either a shot to win the game or appear to have a shot.  The best way to go over end games where both teams have a score of 350 or better, is to offer a situation.  Here is a spades quiz I offer and will allow you the readers out there to decide what you think would be the "best bid" and explain why.  After a short time, I'll give you what I feel is the "best bid" and why.  There can always perhaps be another idea to certain hands, but that we can leave to I hope friendly debate.

Again, like I had said the previous post about bidding the score and not your hand, lets assume unless otherwise stated that the other three players at the table will typically make the correct bid and are seasoned players. 

Here in this first quiz, I will give a similar situation that happen to me in a live tourney event with real cards.  I don't of course remember score totally nor the cards I was dealt but the situation itself is what we will focus on.

Score:
North/South: 411 - 1 bags
East/West: 393 - 3 bags

This game was during a consolation tourney event during the first round and was facing two players who actually were euchre players but with the luck of the deals, gave us a tough game by them making many nils (also missed a couple).  So it didn't surprise me, that East bids another nil during the critical end game time.

West: 3
North: 2
East:  nil
South: ?

South's Holdings

Spades: A, 10, 8, 7, 4
Hearts: A, J, 5
Diamonds: K, 6, 3
Clubs: Q, 7

What would you bid here if you are South and why? 

3 would be a reasonable bid here.

We must either set the Nil or set West.  Setting West looks almost impossible, so we have to concentrate on the NIl.  That means dumping as many winners as possible and not putting any unnecessary pressure on ourselves to make what, in essence, is a meaningless bid.  If we set the Nil we will almost certainly win, and if we don't we will lose.

Nice to see you R.

One could even bid 2 here, but definitely not 4.

Good to see you see you too J.  I'll give a few more days to see if anyone else has an ideas to this quiz. 

I would be 4 here. The idea being you are telling your partner that your hand is not weak. In addition saving the spades to cover the nil only covers the nil. Thus we need to trump with them ... in said process we would be winning tricks... it serves no point to bid artificially lower than we need to.... 13 tricks will still be won regardless....hence bags will be split regardless. 

Actually, it serves every purpose to bid artificially lower than we need to here.

This is why learning a score based approach to Spades is so important.  We are in crisis here.  Hopefully we can unload our Ace of Hearts, King of Diamonds, and/or Queen of Clubs without taking tricks with them, or at least two of them.  Yes we will win two or three Spade tricks even if we start trumping from the top down, but those might also be tricks that pard would win otherwise. 

All that bidding up does here is lower the probability that we will win the game.  Unless that is our desire, there is no need or reason to be trying to squeeze our an extra 10 points unless we care about by how much we lose.  If bags were a problem it would be a consideration, but they are not.

A 3 bid takes the score to 460 to 320 unless we lose the game on this hand.

The miniscule increased likelihood of winning the game from 470 to 320 is more than offset by the loss of any flexibility in playing the hand that accompanies bidding anything near a normal bid here.

Well it's been a few days and we have a couple results here.  Do keep in mind as I said on post, I don't remember all the cards I had in my hand for this was over 6-7 years ago.

Let us first examine the 2-4 bid Galt and _0000 had suggested here.  We are bidding low in hopes we can set the nil because bag setting on this hand is not an option.  In a sense we are taking a chance that East's nil is weak and/or West's cover is weak.  This is a good options but, it wasn't what I figured was my only bid when I took other factors into the game.

First if we look back at the other team, we are facing a euchre team who just entered tourney just for fun.  They were quick to bid nil often because perhaps they always had a hand to bid nil on.  I sensed that East's nil was for real and felt no matter how North and I played, we would not be able to stop it.  I trace back to _00000 post about knowing and trusting your partner.  Since we played a number of games together and played in a tourney earlier, I felt strongly that we had a better option than trying to set the nil and even win the game on this deal.  Another factor, I looked at why would North bid only 2 when East bid nil?  Figuring that East/West again aren't an experienced team, I felt it had to be my partner North who was lying about their bid.

I went ahead and offered a bid of 7 bumping the bid total to 12.  With the bid of 7 first of all gives us a score of 501+bags and the win if we can either set the bid by West and/or nil by East.  The high bid also sent a clear message to my partner North that we will be going after West's 3 bid and concede the nil.  Any bid of 8 or 9 would be meaningless and would just increase our chances of getting set if the nil bid went set. 

Turned out indeed North was playing conservatively by bidding low in case of East went nil again.  West covering the nil was their number one task and our task was set West's bid.  West was at a disadvantage since without help from East, they were unable to make their 3 bid.  North and I claimed 11 tricks out of 13 and set West's bid of 3 and indeed turned out,  the nil by East was a fairly easy one. 

The final score was:

North/South: 503 - 3 bags
East/West:  463 - 3 bags

The question you all might ask me... What if my bid of 7 was incorrect?  If we failed to stop West and/or they set us, odds are East would have made nil anyway and we still lost game.   Another ending could have happened;  East's nil attempt was a poor one and they go set but odds are we are set too and the game continues on with a near even score. 

Here again this post shows that just bidding on the strength of your hand isn't always the correct bid.  I looked at the score and made a bid that could win us the game plus gave our partner a clear message what I felt our best plan of attack was. 

If you enter a hand like this assuming that you are going to be able to set the 3 bid, your expected win percentage over numerous games will be extremely low.  This represents more an example of playing a gut feeling than it does adjusting one's bid to the score of the game. 

Well like I said, I don't remember exactly what cards I had and it was 6-7 years ago so perhaps I under rated the hand I may have had.    Perhaps this was a poor first example.  What if I had this hand would you still underbid and go for the set on nil? 

Spades: A, Q, 10, 7, 5, 4
Hearts: A, J, 5
Diamonds: K, 10
Clubs: Q, 7

Anyhow, never assume anything and nothing is never absolute when it comes to spades.

Now it is getting close. 

The advantages here are that the strength of your pard's hand is increased due to the Nil bid and that West has to lead into you on trick 1.

The disadvantage is that you are going to win lots of tricks, which means you are going to have to lead away from strength numerous times, which increases the ability of West to win tricks.

It's going to be harder to set the Nil with this hand, and the question pretty much becomes is it going to be easier to set West or catch the NIl with a Spade.  Close call, but again I would say that this is much more of a strategy call than a score based bid call.  You certainly could bid 7 here and see how the first two or three tricks develop.  The Heart Jack is very important here.  If you are able to cash that one and pard gets 1 overtrick, you can probably set West.

That is what I would look to do unless West takes a couple of tricks off the top.