In regular Spades there is a little trick known as the Tactical 3rd-Seat Underbid. The third bidder deliberately lowers his normal bid to put some pressure on the final bidder. The idea is to nudge 4th seat into raising his bid so that he may be set, or perhaps merely to discourage him from reducing his bid to a safer level. This ploy may not work very often, but it is a low-risk action. A player gives up only 10 points or so to try it.

How useful is the Tactical 3rd-Seat Underbid in Duplicate Spades? Here it is a high-risk action. If you cannot set the opponents you are consigning a 0% result to your side, since you have bid 1 level lower than the rest of the field. On the other hand, its chances for success are greater, because duplicate players must push their bids.

Q762 92 K63 Q953 4 Q1073 QJ8742 AK K1083 85 9 J108742 AJ95 AKJ64 A105 6 South West North East 5 2 2 3 West led the A

After trumping the second club, South cashed her three side-suit winners and exited with a diamond. As West and North looked on as spectators, East and South traded trumping tricks, East trumping three red-suit leads and exiting each time with clubs that South cheerfully cut. Eventually East's K fell to the A, and North made two spade tricks at the finish.

East had indeed won three tricks, as advertised, but West could not recover the lost King of clubs. East and West went set, the only pair to do so. No other E/W pair had ventured above the 4-level. The Tactical 3rd-Seat Underbid paid off for North, whose actions earned his team top score.