Learn About Queens in Barbu

Video Transcript

"Okay, we are going to talk about Queens here. Queens is an avoidance game where, obviously, you are trying to avoid tricks which have queens contained in them. Let us look at this hand, which I think is a really good hand for queens. There is a slight risk factor with the ace of spades but you do have it four times. There is a marginal slight risk factor with the king of diamonds. But again anytime you have a four card suite with one of the tops, not both, not Ace King but just Ace or King, you have the opportunity to avoid taking tricks. And the key to this hand is look at the club and heart suites, completely safe. It is sort of like the game of hearts, when you are leading spades you can not get hit with a queen of spades. If you are leading the jack of spades they can not blast you with the queen of spades. And by the same token if you chose queens with this hand and you had the lead, all you have to do is start with the ten of clubs and you do not care who takes it. If the person on your right side takes it and starts leading through you should be able to duck this three times before a queen of spades would come up. I mean if the queen of spades doesn't come up you are fine. You might get hurt here but at the very least you are completely safe from hearts and completely safe in clubs and pretty safe in diamonds. Slight risk here you might hope to dump the king of diamonds or the ace of spades. It is a great hand for queens because there are no queens in it so nobody is going to plow into your hand. However, if you have a hand like this; let's just use an illustrative hand here. On the surface this hand looks good. While one thing is sure you are probably going to take that queen of hearts that is a guaranteed. This is kind of a nice hand in some ways; however, there is always the risk factor that maybe the top diamonds will get out and your jack of diamonds will be good and somebody who, if the queen of diamonds has not been played, and probably it will, you might still get hit with other queens. So this is a marginal hand for queens. And if you have a hand that is going in for tricks then you obviously want to avoid taking hands that have trick taking potential or that even have a queen taking potential. So call queens when you have a good load of low cards, not any long suites and definitely an absent of aces and kings."