We saw in the previous hand that one way to overcome an opponent's nil bid is to overbid your hand and then to concentrate on making your extravagant bid. Lest anyone thinks this method is a panacea for all nil bids, I offer this cautionary example.

A9 76532 J8 Q1097 Q108 104 Q1076 AJ42 J74 J8 AK32 8653 K6532 AKQ9 954 K North East South West 2 nil 7 2 East led the J

First of all, do you think the East hand is suitable for nil? I don't, but six out of nine East players thought so. All of them were duly set, either in diamonds or in hearts. And all of these teams properly received poor results compared to the East/Wests who were content with a team 5-bid. But what of the six North/Souths who beat the nil? Five N/S pairs collected scores ranging from 160 to 188 points for fine results. The sixth North/South pair bid the hand as shown at the right. Clearly they were using the overbid strategy. Note in particular South's 7-bid.

East led the J and the nil was set at Trick 1. But he then flexed his muscles. After cashing the A-K, he turned matters over to his partner who scored two more tricks to set the hapless N/S team. In fact, E/W were even fed four bags, although these extra tricks made not a whit of difference. North and South scored a cold 0% bottom.

After the match, South complained to me about the 'unfairness' of the result and the scoring system. "Setting an opp's nil and giving them 4 bags is a job well done in regular Spades, but here it gets you another 0 %."

Sorry, friend, you can't have it both ways. Whether the game is regular 500-point Spades or Duplicate, you must be prepared to pay the price for the crime of overbidding.