The Effect of Bags on a Game of Spades

"As I said before bags were put into the game, were added to the game in the late 1960's because, this feature was to help to ratchet down, I guess you could ratchet up too, That's an interesting word. The use of the bidding by the old classic spaders who decided that well, maybe the partners had to bid a minimum of two. So you get these eight and nine bids and who cares if you make over tricks. In other words, you didn't have to bid accurately. Some variations in the game even allowed people to bid three and if they made five, they got credit for five. So if that's the case, then why would you bid five, you just could bid three, you could bid one. You could be much like the whisk group that has a game that's a lot of fun. They play with jokers, they play with the kitty. It's just a really wild west game and if you bid four then you make thirteen and you get what's called a Boston and isn't that just great? Then you could bid null, trump and so forth. In spades the bag feature was added to add a dimension to the game where bagging does become a key part of the game. The great players really know how to utilize the bagging strategy, and the idea is to try to force the opponents into the penalty situation for underbidding the hands. There is a fine line between over bidding and under bidding and it's called the eleven bid. You know that when the hand is bid at eleven, you have to make a decision, are you going to go for the set, or are you going to go for the bags? It's tough to beat a trick, I mean if you have a suit that looks like queen, eight, and a really small one six. Can you really bid that for a trick? Well, if it was spades, probably. If it was hearts and so forth, but there's often times where you'd be forced to take a trick from that hand. And, a lot of the good players, what they do is that if they're forced to take this queen earlier then they say okay I took a trick I wasn't counting on and maybe if I can take another one that I'm not counting on and there's an eleven bid on the table, perhaps I can go for a set. So again, keep in mind that bagging is part of the game and the accumulation of over tricks will result in penalties, but it's like losing one-hundred points. But then again if you over bid then you wind up getting into set situations. When we look at the advance side of this particular topic we will see the impact on bags and how the strategy of bagging really takes a big role in the end game of spades. Again, conservative but not too conservative. Bid the tricks that you think you're going to take without going over the limit."