Images (C) 2000 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
The Zone's Suicide . . .
At the Zone suicide is differentiated from Yahoo! suicide in the bid count. This is a BIG
difference. In all other forms of Spades both partners collect tricks. IN ZONE SUICIDE ONLY THE
BIDDER'S TRICKS COUNT TOWARD THE BID. The N-partner only contributes bags.
Forget about what your mother told you about bidding the Ace of Spades. If you can only bid less
than 4, then don't bother, unless there is already a large opponent bid.
In order to play at the Zone one must sit at a table by clicking on a chair and then wait for
other players, At Yahoo!, one makes a table and waits for or invites others to play. During play,
at the Zone, boots will produce bot replacements. At Yahoo! the bots come by invitation only. The
bots at Yahoo! actually know suicide and bid accordingly. (Good practice for suicide beginners to
play at Yahoo! with 3 bots. Bots usually bid too low and you get the chance to bid 7 from a Nil
hand rather than let the bot bid!)
The strategy of Zone suicide is simple: Kill or be killed. If your hand is awful, then there is
no point hiding it. Go after the opponent's bid and try to set the opponent's Nil as well.
Admittedly, setting a 3 or 4 bid sounds ridiculous, but it may not be avoidable. In order to allow
a bidding partner to make tricks, you may collect a lot of bags.
Don't give up. Hands are random although it may seem like they are stacked against you. It's not
uncommon to see 400 point leads vanish in a heartbeat.
Bags: can't live with them; can't live without them. Having the arbiter hand is best to allow
regulation of bags. Therefore, if the other bidder is an arbiter, consider adding 1 or 2 tricks to
your bid to accommodate forced tricks.
