The rule, precisely
A call of 6 or more that you meet scores double your call. Meet a call of 6 and you take +12 rather than +6. Fall short and you lose your call in the ordinary way: −6. There is no partial credit and no consolation for coming close.
| Call | If you meet it | If you fall short |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | +5 | −5 |
| 6 | +12 | −6 |
| 7 | +14 | −7 |
| 8 | +16 | −8 |
The jump between the 5 and 6 rows is where all the strategy lives.
Note the discontinuity. Moving from a call of 5 to a call of 6 asks for one extra trick and pays an extra seven points for it. No other increment in the game is remotely like this. Every other step up costs one more trick of risk for one more point of reward.
The one result worth memorising
Why the bonus halves the success rate you need.
Take any call below 6. You win your call or you lose it — the payoff is symmetric. Writing p for your probability of making it, the expected value is:
This is zero when p = 0.5. A non-bonus call needs a coin flip to be worth making.
Now take a bonus-eligible call of 6 or more. You win double your call or lose your call — the payoff is asymmetric, two to one in your favour:
This is zero when p = 1/3. A bonus call needs only one chance in three.
That is the whole insight, and it is worth stating plainly: the double bonus cuts the success rate you need from 50% to 33%. Notice also that c cancels out of the break-even entirely — calls of 6, 7 and 8 all break even at exactly one third. The size of the call changes how much you win and lose, not how often you need to be right.
But break-even is the wrong bar
Breaking even against doing nothing is not the relevant comparison, because you are never choosing between calling 6 and abstaining. You are choosing between calling 6 and calling something else on the same cards. The real question is whether calling 6 beats calling 5.
A call of 5 is unusually safe, and this is underappreciated. It scores +5 for anything from 5 to 9 tricks — a four-trick-wide band of success — because overtricks score nothing but only turn negative at double your call, which for a call of 5 means 10 tricks. On a hand strong enough to be considering 6, your chance of landing somewhere in 5-to-9 is very high.
| Your chance | EV of calling 6 | EV of calling 5 at that rate |
|---|---|---|
| 20% | −2.4 | −3.0 |
| 33% | 0.0 | −1.7 |
| 50% | +3.0 | 0.0 |
| 70% | +6.6 | +2.0 |
| 80% | +8.4 | +3.0 |
| 90% | +10.2 | +4.0 |
Each row applies the stated success rate to each call independently. In a real hand the two rates differ — you are always likelier to make 5 than 6 on the same cards.
The catch is in that footnote. On a given hand you are not equally likely to make both. If you are 50% to take six tricks, you are probably 80% or better to land in the 5-to-9 band. Compare those actual numbers and calling 6 is worth +3.0 while calling 5 is worth +3.0 — a dead heat, with the call of 5 carrying far less variance.
What a 52% hand actually looks like
The threshold is only useful if you can recognise when you have cleared it. This cannot be computed at the table, but it can be checked against a list. A hand that is genuinely better than even money for six tricks essentially always has all three of these.
- ♠Five or more spades, including two of the top three. Trump length is what lets you take tricks late in the round when everyone else is void. Five small spades is not the same hand as five spades headed by the ace and king.
- ♠At least one outside ace. Six tricks is too many to take on trump alone against three opponents. You need at least one certain winner that does not consume a spade.
- ♠No more than one truly weak suit. Two or three suits where you hold nothing above a nine means you will be forced to discard repeatedly and will lose control of the lead.
Roughly 17.6% of hands contain five or more spades to begin with, and only a fraction of those also carry the top spades and an outside ace. A well-founded call of 6 is therefore something like a one-in-ten to one-in-fifteen event. If you are calling 6 more often than that, you are calling it on hands that do not support it.
When the maths stops applying
Everything above optimises expected points. For most of a game that is the right objective, because points accumulate and a strategy that gains points on average wins over time. Near the end of a game it becomes actively wrong.
Late game, you maximise probability of winning
Suppose the game runs to 30 points, you are on 12, and the leader is on 26 with one round remaining. Calling 4 and making it takes you to 16. That is a positive expected-value play and it loses the game with certainty. Calling 6 and making it takes you to 24 — still short. Calling 8 and making it takes you to 28.
In that position the only calls with any winning chance at all are the ones the expected-value analysis rejects. A 15% shot at a game-winning outcome beats a 90% shot at an outcome that cannot win, and it is not close. The relevant question stops being “what gains the most points?” and becomes “what is the cheapest path to a number that actually wins?”
Being the leader inverts it
The mirror case matters just as much. If you are the one on 26, the other three will converge on breaking your call, whether or not they discuss it. Your effective success rate on any call is lower than your cards suggest, because you now face coordinated interference that the probabilities do not account for. Shade your calls down when leading, and treat a call of 6 in that position as considerably riskier than the same hand would be at level scores.
Try the threshold
Play solo rounds and, whenever you hold five or more spades, decide between 5 and 6 before you look at the result. Track how often the 6 would have landed. Most players discover they are well under 52%.
Play Free — No Sign-up Needed ↗Frequently asked questions
What success rate do I need to justify calling 6?
One in three. A call of 6 pays +12 if met and costs −6 if missed, so it breaks even at a 33.3% success rate. This holds for every bonus-eligible call: a call of 7 pays +14 against −7, a call of 8 pays +16 against −8, and all of them break even at exactly one third.
Why is the break-even for a call of 5 different?
Because there is no bonus below 6. A call of 5 pays +5 if met and costs −5 if missed — symmetric, so it breaks even at 50%. The double bonus is precisely what drops the requirement from a coin flip to one chance in three, and that is the entire strategic significance of the rule.
Is calling 6 better than calling 5 on a strong hand?
Only if you are better than roughly 52% to take six tricks. Below that, a call of 5 on the same hand usually has a higher expected value and much lower variance, because the safe band for a call of 5 is wide — anything from 5 to 9 tricks scores +5.
Does the double bonus apply in Round 1?
No. Round 1 is played open with no bidding at all, so there is no call to double — every trick simply scores +1. The bonus only exists from Round 2 onward, once players start announcing calls.
Should I call 6 when I am losing badly?
Often yes, even on a hand that does not justify it. Late in a game, expected value stops being the right measure — what matters is your probability of actually winning. If you are fifteen points behind in the final round, a successful call of 5 still loses the game, so a 30% shot at +12 is strictly better than a 90% shot at an outcome that cannot help you.