Here’s a real game scenario. We were playing set partner rook the other day as we usually do and my partner and I found ourselves relatively close in score with our competition at 240 pts to 210 pts in the middle of a heated rook game to 500. During this next had, the bidding was more intense than normal. Myself and an aggressive bidder to the left of me were pushing the action further and further. Finally, the bid got to 170 and I needed to bid 175 in order to likely take the kitty and have a chance to win the hand.
Looking at my hand, I was holding:
Greend – 3, 5, 10
Red – 5, 6, 9, 10, 1
Yellow – 5
Black – 10, 11, 14
Rook – Yes
I indeed had a powerhouse hand in set partner rook. The problem is, my partner had passed early, and my competition had both bid aggressively throughout the entire bidding stage. That being said, I likely was not going expect any help from my partner. Also, there was a good possibility that the kitty was not going to have a lot of strength since my opponents were bidding so strong, they likely had many of the good cards out there.
Given the above situation, I chose to take the cautious route and pass the bid to my opponent at 170 knowing I actually did not have a good chance at setting them. AS it turns out, my opponent chose yellow and proceeded to play the 1 and 14 of trump right away pulling my only yellow. With my partner having an extremely weak hand this round, we only ended up taking a measly 5 pts and our opponents easily took a strong lead in the overall game.
Looking back on it, I think my decision was correct, however, if by chance the 1 of black or the 14 of red were in the kitty, I might have a decent shot at making my bid. That is the risk you take when bidding aggressively or not.