There is no magic formula to set even when there are two nils. If there were, both cover hands would use it! Quite frankly, the nil hand that has good cards will always succeed, and the one that has bad cards is in trouble. But here are two tips for playing with two nils on board.

It makes a major difference if you are in the "driver's seat." If the other cover hand is to your left, you have a huge advantage in many respects.

Partner - nil Q 3 West K J 4 East - nil 10 8 7 5 You A 9 6 2

Follow suit with middle cards. If you have A962 of a suit, play the 6 under the king lead, and the 9 under the opponent's jack or ten. You save the high and low cards -- the high one to rescue partner and the low one to underplay the nil opponent's card, if possible. This strategy applies to all four suits.

Second, the first nil bidder will not have the king of spades, but the next player will often risk nil with that card. If you were dealt AQxxx, break spades and lead the queen and another low spade.

You don't have to create 'extra room' to set a nil. One or both of the nil bidders will have aces and kings that he cannot bid and mustn't play, so the table total will be low in any case. Bid normally and take the bags if you must. If you are in the driver's seat you might choose to underbid by 1 trick, since you plan to keep your opponent in the lead as best you can. Remember that your first priority is to protect your partner's nil.

You are quite correct that the guidelines for bidding a spade suit are too simplistic. The concept of bidding each spade above 3 works fine for 4- and 5-card suits, but needs an adjustment for longer, broken suits. This issue is discussed in Spades for Winners. Here is the relevant section, which follows a table on bidding the spade suit.

"The recommended bid is actually a probability value rounded to a whole number. The number of tricks you will actually take from the spade suit during play will depend on many factors that cannot be determined during the bidding phase, such as the opponents' spade distribution and partner's spade holding.

"Should you rigorously following the above bidding guidelines? The above hand evaluates to a 7-bid. You count 5 for the spade suit plus 2 more for the diamond winners. Assuming your partner bids 2, you would have to make a total of nine tricks.

"But too many spades can be a liability in their own way. You will eventually have to lead the suit yourself, which makes it easy for the opponents to get their own spade winners. Furthermore, your shortage of plain-suit cards reduces the power of your partner's queens and jacks. Rather than risk being set at a 9-bid, which would be a 180-point swing, you should reduce your bid by 1 in most cases. You will settle for a safe +80 points, a fine score. The potential extra 10 points are not worth the risk of a large loss."

It is true that bidding conservatively provides safety, but you still lose 10 points on each hand that you underbid. You gain nothing, point-wise, for handing out bags. The point-value of a bag may be closer to 7 points than 10, but there are many problems with all such theories regarding the worth of a bag.

• You cannot guarantee that the opponents will win the extra trick that you have created by underbidding. Sometimes your strategy will backfire and your side will be stuck with all the bags.
• Bags are sometimes meaningless. If the opponents have a low bag count past the 350-point mark, they can take merrily additional bags without worry.
• If the opponents pass the 500-point mark before you do, it makes no difference how many bags they have. You lose.

You should continue to bid conservatively and play a bagging style if these methods give you the greatest comfort, but know that mathematics does not support this approach to Spades.

None of the above if it is still early in the game. Your best course is to bid normally and try to set the opponents (which should be your usual style of play at any score). Overbidding or bidding bad nils only risks falling further behind. Bagging strategy works best in the late stages of the game, and then only if the score is fairly close.

Of course, if you are still trailing as the game progresses, you are justified in bidding increasingly risky nils.

Essentially, you lose. That's Spades.

There is a random factor in the deal of the hand that assures us all of getting our fair share of good cards and bad cards in the long run. In the short run, however, one side may be extremely lucky. There's nothing to be done. Accept your losses as bad luck (which it is) and wait for the tide to turn.