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When an underbid is Good
wizard - 7/3/2024 at 06:49 PM

Situation: Final hand of a 4-player game of MAGIC.
I was last to bid. The first bids were 5-4-4 for a total of 13. If I bid 2 it would be an even bid. But the resulting scores would be +70, +60, +60, +40.
My 15-card hand included 2 Jesters, a 2 of Diamonds, and a Wizard. I could easily make 2 tricks but that would not benefit me. Instead, I bid Zero knowing that I could dump my 2 winning tricks. I hoped that at least one of the 3 other players would go down. However, it turned out that all 3 of the opponents went down and I was the only one making the bid. The reason that this worked so well was because the other players were keeping track of the 2 of Diamonds and the 4 Wizards. They assumed I held neither of them because I bid zero.
I held on to them as long as I could to conceal their thereabouts. I was able to do this thanks to the 2 Jesters that I held.