Hi. I've noticed something that other players do, and I would like to know why they do it. The high bidder will lead their first trick with a low trump, the opponent to his left plays a king or ten of trump, and then the low bidder plays an ace of trump and wins the trick. So the high bidder passed an ace trump to their partner. Why did the high bidder do that? Why not keep the ace and play it as the first card on the first trick?
@Lee
You may be talking about me....lol. if my cards are right I will do something very similar to that scenario every time I get the right cards.
Let's first establish some common nomenclature that will logically make sense for the conversation. We have bitters that bid on each round hoping to win the bid. We have a bid winner that will call out what the Trump suit will be and will also take control of this round. The bid winner has a partner so we will establish that team as having a primary hand which is the bid winner and a secondary hand which is the supporting partner. The other two players are just the other team.
When I get a real solid hand not only before the bid but also after the four card pass and this solid hand has a lot of power cards not only in the Trump suit but maybe in a second and / or third suit then I will do the scenario that you are asking about and I am explaining.
Say I have won the bid and have called Spades as Trump. I ended up getting a family or some people call it a run Plus the second Ace. My hand has so much meld in it I am having a hard time choosing the four cards to send back to the secondary hand. Besides having a family in the Trump suit along with extra cards like the second Ace and maybe the second queen and both nines I also have four of a kind in Kings.
I did not make four of a kind in aces but I do have three of the different aces. So what do I do with all this power along with all this Trump plus the Kings are point guards but they're also kind of dead weight.
Well, I always try to get my partner involved and don't assume they are just a sloth or dead weight and worthless as I saw someone right on this form recently which I think is ridiculous. So for this hypothetical scenario the four cards I sent back to my partner were one of the Trump aces, one of the nine of trump, and the second and third aces of different suits in my hand. Now I gave away these aces back to my partner for a good reason versus I've had partners give me back aces that I sent to them for absolutely no good reason but to clear their hand of that suit which I think is foolish.
So let's look at what this has done. As you noted the bid winter which is also the primary hand for this round did not lead with the Ace of trump like you would think he should and most good players do.. in this hypothetical situation I would have led with the queen of trump so that the opponent throws a king or 10 and my partner throws the ace I sent and the other opponent sends a low Trump. So now we have bled out for Trump cards and control is in the secondaries hand like you stated in your note. I planned it that way if it was me that you saw so that they could use the two aces while they have control and I can throw two of my Kings from my four of a kind Kings I got eight points of meld. Then hopefully my partner is sharp enough, I have had many that haven't been, sharp enough to throw at 9:00 of trump after they run out all of their power safely. Since I have the second Ace of trump that turns the power back to me and I continue to bleed out the Trump cards from the opponent's hands and then hopefully continue to clean out the other suits and maybe even skunk them by taking all books for perfect hand or is a minimum we make our bid.
Please note that if you didn't see a second Ace of trump come out from the primary hand then it was not me that you saw do what you were questioning. The only time I do that scenario is when I've got both aces. So depending on what kind of power along with the other cards I have in my hand there are so many different ways to run that little game there. The whole reason behind this and the short story of it is that I am utilizing my partner to take some of the junk out of my hand that were decent meld but we're now useless to me. Remember that it's for player partners so be a "Team".
You are welcome to whoever else reads this and uses it.
@Mike-Ox-Big Thank you so very much for your detailed reply. It all makes perfect sense and I shall endeavour to use this strategy when it seems fit to do so. Thanks again.
@Lee
You are most welcome, Sir. Hope it helps out. Now remember that I only do it when I have both aces in the Trump suit. I guess you could do it with one ace but that leaves your hand pretty anemic.. LOL. Also, you need to watch when you have only several Trump cards instead of many because you want to take that last book.
I wish Josh could give us chat so that we could communicate with our partners a little in between hands but that is an avenue for nasty players to get nasty and berate and belittle a partner they think isn't up to snuff. But a chat can be used to explain a little bit to a younger player of what the intent was so that others can learn because every hand is different and you can't learn everything off the tutorial even though the learning tutorial on this app is quite good.
Josh would know best but adding a chat might be really intense on the room on the servers regarding memory and bandwidth so that might not be possible without a huge investment.
Well, good luck and good cards.
M.O.B.