When to Pass
Pass when your strength is in points rather than trump, when your four trump are small and you are playing jack of diamonds, when picking would leave you alone with the J♦ in your own hand, and when a marginal hand sits in an early seat. Passing is not free, but a bad pick costs far more.
Five hands that fool people
- Aces and tens with little trump. A♣ 10♣ A♠ A♥ Q♦ 8♦: 46 points and two trump. It looks rich. It is a hand that wins tricks only until the suits go round once, after which the picker is trumped on every ace. On defense, the same cards are excellent.
- Four small trump at jack of diamonds. A♦ K♦ 9♦ 7♦ with two fail cards. With no queen and no jack, picking measured about 5 units worse than passing. Low trump get pulled by high trump; they do not control a hand.
- Four trump including the J♦. At jack of diamonds, picking with the jack in your own hand means going alone on four trump. It measured as a loss of about 4 to 6 units a pick, while the same strength without the jack is a good pick.
- Three trump with no queen. J♣ J♠ 10♦ and three fail cards. About 2 units worse than passing, on average.
- Two trump that are not both queens. Every two-trump hand short of two queens lost, from about 2 units with one queen to about 4 with none, and no fail aces rescued it.
About the numbers: they come from our own simulations, in which our strongest computer players play the same deals both ways and the results are compared. A unit is one defender’s base payment. They are measured at five-handed with the live table rules, against strong opponents, and they are averages, not guarantees for any one hand.
Early seats should be stricter
The first seat to decide knows least about the table: four players behind may hold the trump that beats you. Every borderline hand on the when to pick page is a little worse from the first seat and a little better from the dealer’s chair. If a hand is a close call, the seat breaks the tie.
What a pass costs
- You give up the crack. A player who passes may not crack the eventual picker. Only the seats the blind never reached may. A strong defensive hand in an early seat has to choose between picking and keeping that option, and it cannot have both.
- At a doubler table, a deal that passes all the way round makes the next hand worth double, so a table that passes too much plays for bigger and bigger stakes. Our computer players, on a very strict line, passed out about 35% of deals; picking a little lighter in the last two seats brought that down to about 24% at no cost in points.
- At a schwanzer table, a pass-out makes the player holding the most trump pay everyone. Passing a decent trump hand is a real risk there, and some hands that are passes elsewhere become picks.
- At a leaster table, a passed deal turns into a lowest-points game, which a hand full of queens is badly suited for.
A pass is often the stronger play
A hand with fail aces, a couple of decent trump and a short suit is exactly what the defense needs: aces to cash early, trump to overtake the picker’s small ones, and a void to trump the called suit. Passing it is not timid. Turning it into a thin pick swaps a good defensive hand for a poor picking one. The defense page covers what to do with it.
About the mauer
A player who passes hand after hand gets called a mauer, and at Sheepshead Club the MAUER badge appears after twelve hands without a pick. It is teasing, not advice. Pass the hands that should be passed and the badge will take care of itself.
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Play a hand
Sheepshead Club is free, with no ads and no account needed. Play a first hand with the coach beside you (about three minutes), or sit down at a table with computer players or real people.