Sacrifice Bidding

Sacrifice bidding has to be an integral part of your strategy. It's not your hand; the opponents have the big guns, and you're more or less destined for a minus score. But you can often cut that minus number down some with some astute bidding on your part.

I'm presuming that all readers know what the purpose of sacrifice bidding is, but there are a few remarks I'd like to make nevertheless. One is the danger of thinking that favorable vulnerabilty -- they are, we're not --virtually a suit of armor protecting you against disaster. Which it isn't. And I can testify that some of the most excessive scores for making a too high sac come with favorable vulnerability.

Another thing to bear in mind is that in sac bidding, you don't have the cushions you have in straighforward bidding. By that, I mean that if you go down in four hearts or six spades, there are a couple of cushions here. In the first case, the opponents bid to three spades, which they can make, and if you are not vul, or if vul not doubled, that's better than what they could have made. You don't have that cushion in sac bidding. If you bid "one too many", there's no compensatory solace in what they could've made, since the definition of "one too many" is going down more than they could have made with their bid.

And another cushion in straightforward bidding is that the odds favor game and little slam bidding on, say, 50% odds, since we pick up more in game or little slam bonus when we're right than we lose in missing a partial (on an overbid game) or game bonus (in overbidding to a slam). (I have read that in grand slam, you need something 67% chance for it to be worthwhile, but I won't go into that here.) Well, don't we have the same cushion in sac bidding? Win a few, lose a few, don't the former, if more numerous, outweigh the latter? Well, given such vague terms, one can hardly argue. Obviously if the former greatly outnumber the latter, that must be a pretty healthy situation. Still, I don't think there's quite such a demonstrable point where where any pair can point to bad sacs being outweighed by the good.

You have to bear one thing in mind when you contemplate a sac, to wit: you're judging the potential of each pair. And that's necessarily a lot more difficult and chancy than simply judging your partnership's potential. The opponents can't always make that contract you're thinking of sacrificing over. Nor, if they "can" make with good play, do declarers always play so well. And one more thing: the sacrificer necessarily acts unilaterally with that final bid, which is to say that when it turns out to be "one too many" or it's a phantom sac, the term for sacrificing when those guys can't even make their bid, it opens the path to partnership acrimony, which may not happen in healthy partnerships, but who sez they're all healthy?

I cannot forbear one last comment, and that's on "reverse vul" sacrifices (we're vul, they're not) at the game level. I've often said that I have one rule on them, which is don't. I mean, look at how close a call you've got to make, which is both down one on your side, they can make on theirs. And it's very close to say, Oh, we can make 9 tricks in spades but not be able to pick up more than 3 in hearts. It's an awfully close call.

Oh, they exist, certainly. If you play enough bridge, you'll see them now and then. But they're awfully hard to call. I was a little non-plussed some years ago when, upon mentioning my feeling on reverse vul sacs, a woman said, "Oh, you knows who's good at them?" And she went on to name a woman, no particular friend of hers and not a particular outstanding player (in my opinion). It was strange to my mind on two counts. One is that they're just not all that common. Where do you find 'em often enough to say someone's "good at that", which certainly implies, oh, 5 or 6 instances as a minimum over not too long a period. I think it would be hard to find that many. And to find a particular person has discovered and exploited that many instances, a person I'd never seen her partnered with, just defied belief.

And one last comment on reverse vul sacs: It was looking at one that prompted me to initiate this cagegory and which will be my number one exhibit! Make sense? No, of course not. I suppose I should have 4 or 5 instances of costly attempts at reverse vul sacs before I offer one that works. I don't want to encourage any readers into attempting them which might be induced from a positive example with no negative ones. But the hand is there and I'm going to state my position clearly and say, yet here is one that would've worked.