Bidding Solo in the Game of Spades

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Dan Kimbrough on behalf of expertvillage.com, in this clip we are going to discuss how to bid a spade hand when you are playing by yourself. The difference between this and playing with partners is that if you bid a spade hand with partners whether it's partnership rules or individual bidding you have a partner to fall back on. So if you say that you could get 2 and your partner says 4, as a team you bid 6. If you only get 1 but your partner gets 5, your team has still met there bid and they haven't been set. Whereas when you are playing individually it means that there may be four people playing but there is no one in your team, so whatever you bid you have to bid yourself. You could also play cut throat which is when everyone gets 17 cards and you don't have a partner because there is only three people playing and again you are playing against the entire team. The sample hand that I have here you see that I have no hearts, I have the ace of diamond, I got a joker, king, and jack of spades. Now, a conservative bid on this one is going to say, I have no hearts so you have 1, the ace as 2, the joker as 3, the king is 4 that is the conservative bid. As long as you get 4 you're fine, if you were to only get 3 which is virtually impossible with this hand, you would be set and you would be -40 points. "