Nil is a bid to take no tricks at all

Bid nil and you promise to lose all thirteen tricks. Do it and your team scores a hundred. Take even one trick and your team loses a hundred, and the tricks you took land on your team as bags.

Your partner still bids normally, and their contract stands on its own. Your tricks never help them make it.

A nil hand is short in spades and low everywhere else

Three spades or fewer, and none of them above the ten. No aces. A king only if you hold two or three small cards in the same suit to play under it.

A long side suit is a problem even when every card in it is small. Once the other three players are void, you are left leading it, and the last two cards in a seven card suit win tricks you did not want.

Play your highest card that still loses

This is the whole technique. On every trick, look at what has been played, and play the biggest card of yours that cannot win.

Playing your lowest card is the common mistake. It keeps your high cards in your hand, and a high card you still hold on the last three tricks is a trick you are about to take.

Get rid of your dangerous cards early

Lead your longest suit while everyone still has to follow. A queen played to a trick that already holds an ace is a queen that can never hurt you again.

Waiting is what kills nil bids. The king you held back on trick two is the king you are forced to play on trick eleven.

Cover your partner by taking tricks early

When your partner goes nil, your job changes. Win tricks and keep the lead, because every trick you take is a trick they cannot be forced into.

  • Lead your aces first, so your partner can throw a high card away safely.
  • Take the trick whenever your partner is winning it, even if it costs you a bag.
  • Hold your high spades back, because those are what you cut with when your partner is in danger.
  • Bid one less than your hand is worth, since some of your tricks go to protecting them.

Two nils in one team is a losing idea

Both partners bidding nil puts two hundred points on the table with nobody covering either one. One bad lead sets both bids.

The bots here follow the same rule. A bot only bids nil on a genuinely safe hand, and it needs a near perfect hand before it will go nil behind a partner who has already done so.