When to Bid Nil in Spades: The Odds, Tested Over 200,000 Deals

Bid Nil in Spades when your hand counts to 1 1/2 tricks or less, you hold no spade above the 10, and every short side suit has a card below the 9. Then play it the right way: when every card you could play would win the trick so far, play your lowest, not your highest. Played that way, those hands made Nil 73% of the time and gained 42.4 points per Nil compared with bidding normally.

That rule goes further than the Nil checklist in our Spades strategy guide. It lets in hands the checklist turns down, like a king in a long side suit, and it counts on one play that our own computer gets wrong. Everything here was measured with the computer players from Poozee's Spades. New to Nil scoring? It's explained in how to play Spades.

How we tested

We dealt 200,000 hands of Spades and looked at all four players' cards in each. Every hand that might be worth a Nil was played twice: once bidding Nil and once bidding normally, with the same cards everywhere else. Your partner bid normally both times and covered the Nil, and the other team played the way our Medium computer does. We never let both partners bid Nil.

"Gained" is how much bidding Nil changed your team's margin (your points minus theirs) compared with bidding normally, with every bag counted as 10 points against the team that took it. A computer isn't a person, and strong human opponents may hunt a Nil harder than ours do, so treat the numbers as a guide to which hands are good, not as exact odds at your table.

Count your hand first

Our strategy guide gives every card a share of a trick, and the total is how many tricks your hand should take. That same count turned out to be a good test for Nil, too. For a weak hand, these are the values that matter:

• Spades from the 2 to the jack: 1/4 each if you hold three spades or fewer, 1/2 each with four or five.
• Side-suit aces: 1, or 3/4 in a suit of six or more.
• Side-suit kings: 3/4 with one or two other cards in the suit, 1/2 with three or more, nothing alone.
• Side-suit queens: 1/4 with one to four other cards in the suit, otherwise nothing.
• Jacks and lower in side suits: nothing.

Here's every hand with no spade above the 10 and a low card in every short side suit, by its count: 279 to 20,462 hands per row. It shows how often Nil was made and how much it gained, first played low, the way this guide recommends (see the next section), then played high, the way Poozee's computer plays it.

Played low, Nil paid at every count up to 1 1/2. At 1 3/4 it still gained 6.1 points per Nil, too thin a margin to count on against tougher opponents, and from 2 on it lost. That's why our line is 1 1/2. About 1 hand in 13 qualifies: 62,299 of the 800,000 hands in our test.

Play your Nil low when you can't duck

When you bid Nil, you want to lose every trick. If you have a card that loses the trick so far, play the highest one, to get rid of your most dangerous card while it's safe (our strategy guide measured that).

But sometimes every card you could play wins the trick so far: say the 2 of hearts is led and all your hearts are higher. Poozee's computer then plays its highest card, hoping to unload it. The better play is your lowest card, because the players after you are much likelier to beat a 7 than a queen, and your partner can cover it. Only when you play last, and lose the Nil whatever you play, should you throw your highest.

On the hands our rule picks, playing high made 55% instead of 73%: 3.2 points per Nil instead of 42.4. The strategy guide's checklist hands made Nil 64% of the time with our computer's play and 76% with this one.

Pro tip: Poozee's computer players still bid Nil by the checklist and play high in this spot. When your computer partner bids Nil, cover it hard: it fails more often than a Nil played low.

Worked example: the 2 of hearts

Here's a hand from our test deals. You bid first, then West bid 3, North 2 and East 6.

• Spades: 7, 5
• Hearts: queen, 10, 8, 7
• Diamonds: queen, 7, 4, 3
• Clubs: 9, 7, 3

Two low spades count 1/4 each and each queen, in a suit of four, counts 1/4: a count of exactly 1. It passes every check, so bid Nil. East won the first trick, and then East led the 2 of hearts.

• Played high: you play the queen, West the 3 and North the 4. You've won a trick and the Nil is gone. You took 2 tricks in all, and the team scored -80 (-100 for the Nil, +20 for North's 2).
• Played low: you play the 7, West the 3, and North covers with the 9. Your queen of hearts went later, under East's ace. The Nil held, North made 2 with a trick to spare, and you scored 121.

Bidding 1 scored 30 (your team bid 3 and took 3). Counting the bag, that Nil came out +81 points better than bidding 1.

Why the line is higher than you'd think

A Nil is worth +100 or -100, so it looks like a coin flip has to be good enough. It isn't quite, because a Nil also changes the rest of the hand. Here's what a Nil changed on the hands our rule picks, on average, compared with bidding normally:

A missed Nil costs more than a made one gains, mainly in bags: every trick a Nil bidder takes is one. So these hands break even at 53%. The line also moves with your hand: it runs from 29% for a hand that counts 0 to 57% at 1 3/4, because a stronger hand gives up more when it doesn't bid normally.

Bidding 1 isn't safe either, though. With these weak hands, bidding 1 got your team set 17% of the time.

Spades: nothing above the 10

Your spades are the one place where the count isn't enough. Here's every hand that counts 1 1/2 or less and has a low card in each short side suit, by its highest spade:

The jack of spades broke even, and anything higher lost. The ace of spades can never lose a trick, so a Nil with it always fails.

The other check is short side suits. With one to three cards in a suit and none below the 9, you can't play under that suit when it's led. Hands that counted 1 1/2 or less but failed this check made 47% and gained -16.3 per Nil.

Side kings and aces are fine, when the count says so

The checklist turns down any side-suit king or ace. The count doesn't, because a king with three or more other cards in its suit counts only 1/2. On the hands our rule picks, Nil was made and gained this much per Nil with no side king or ace: 76%, +57.3; with a side king: 72%, +36.1; and with a side ace: 72%, +33.0.

The reason is that a Nil bidder almost never has to lead. Your high side cards only win if you're forced to follow suit with them, and once you're out of a suit, every lead of it is a chance to throw one away.

Here's a hand the checklist would never bid Nil with: the 4 of spades; jack, 7, 4 and 2 of hearts; king, queen, jack, 5, 3 and 2 of diamonds; and 3 and 2 of clubs. It counts 3/4 (1/4 for the spade, 1/2 for the king). After two club leads you were out of clubs, so when West led clubs on trick 6 you threw the king of diamonds, and on trick 9 the queen. The Nil held, the team scored 130, and bidding 1 would have scored 41.

Your partner's bid

A partner with a strong hand covers better. Here's Nil on the hands our rule picks, by your partner's bid:

Nil paid even next to a partner who bid 1, so your own hand matters most. If your partner has already bid big, that's a good reason to Nil a hand near the line; if they bid 1 or 2, be stricter.

Covering your partner's Nil

If your partner bids Nil, your job is to take the tricks they would otherwise win: when they're winning a trick, beat their card, and when you play before them, play high. Some players worry that this wastes cards they need for their own bid. It doesn't: on the hands our rule picks, the partner who covered was set less often than one who just played normally.

Without the cover, the Nil was barely worth bidding. Playing high to cover also wins tricks, and those count toward your own bid.

How Nils are lost

Of the Nils our rule picks that failed, 72% were lost following suit in a side suit and 28% to a spade. The danger is spread through the hand: 32% in the first four tricks and 27% in the last four. So don't relax once the early leads are over. Keep throwing your highest losing cards whenever you're out of the suit led.

Blind Nil, a Nil bid made before you look at your cards, isn't offered on Poozee, so we haven't measured it.

Keep playing

• Play Spades and try a Nil against the computer
• Spades strategy: how to count your tricks and bid
• Bags in Spades: what every overtrick really costs
• How to play Spades: the rules and scoring, step by step
• How to shoot the moon in Hearts: another all-or-nothing gamble, tested by computer