u/Typical-Contract-361

Game to 500. We’re the blue team. The score is 205(5) - 182(2).

I bid nil after the 6 and made it, but was it a good call?

Standard game to 500. We are blue. The score is 418(8) - 252(2)

This is the first trick. North plays Ac, and East plays Qc.

What card would you play? And how would you approach here?

Game to 500. I'm bidding first. We are the blue team.

Here's what happened next. I bid nil. P bid 3, and they bid 4/2 (not sure who bid 4). My nil got set, and I got a rage from p. I understand their feeling, but even if I had bid normally we would lose anyway. So I at least tried to create some chaotic situation to pressure the opponents into making a bad decision

Do you think nil is a good call?

Game to 500. We are blue.

Game to 500, we are blue.

Sorry I don't have any screenshots this time, I never imagined this would happen.

I was playing against two 2500+ opponents in Spades+, and after three hands we were down 65-243 in a game to 250. At that point, if they didn't make a mistake, I'd say the game was over unless we have 11–12 tricks on the next hand.

On Hand 4, West bid first and bid 5, North bid 1, and East bid 1.

Since I had nothing to lose, I bid 7. This was a necessary bid. The only way to not losing the game was to set them. If we succeeded, we would gain extra points while also avoiding extra bags. And if we failed, we would lose anyway so that wasn't matter.

If I remember correctly, West held seven spades (the highest is jack) and two kings (one of them a singleton). North had one ace and Qx in spades. East had one king and no spades. I held AKTx in spades and two aces.

We managed to set them, bringing the score back to 145-183

On the next hand, I bid nil and made it. The interesting part is that they managed to give us 4 bags, bringing us to 9 bags. That means if I hadn't bid 7 on the previous hand, we wouldn't have won the game.

I'd say we won because they made a serious mistake, and we were a bit lucky. But this is why I always look the score before making a decision (and I hope my partner does too)

Maybe I'm expecting too much from a random players, but I think this is very simple. When you're third to bid in a close game, you should bid in a way that forces your opponents to either push the table to at least 13 or bid nil to win.

For example, in the situation above (game to 250, opponents are ~2200 rating), if East had bid correctly, they could have forced me to make a difficult decision: either make 8 tricks or bid nil to win. However, East bid 1, which allowed me to bid 3 and we only need 7 tricks to win.

I'm not an expert in Spades, and this is just my personal opinion. But one thing I do know is that losing by 1 point or losing by 200 points is the same. So in the endgame, I'd rather bid based on the score than on the hand.

The result is in the second pic.

Game to 250.