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Sacrifice (bridge)

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Sacrifice (bridge)

In duplicate bridge, a sacrifice (a save in common usage) is a deliberate bid of a contract that is unlikely to make in the hope that the penalty points will be less than the points likely to be gained by the opponents in making their contract. In rubber bridge, a sacrifice is an attempt to prevent the opponents scoring a game or rubber on the expectation that positive scores on subsequent deals will offset the negative score.

Owing to the difference in the methods of scoring between duplicate and rubber bridge, a sacrifice bid in rubber bridge is much less likely to be advantageous and so strategies differ between the games. Comparable strategy differences exist between Matchpoints scoring and IMPs scoring games.

In duplicate bridge scoring, if the opponents bid and make a game contract, it yields them 600 or 620 points when they are vulnerable and 400 or 420 points when they are not vulnerable, depending upon the strain and assuming no overtricks. Accordingly, a sacrifice will be advantageous if the resultant loss in points is less than these amounts.

Determination of the most number of tricks that can be lost to satisfy this condition is dependent upon the relative vulnerability of each partnership, i.e. whether one, the other, both or neither are vulnerable. The determination is also based upon the assumption that the opposition will double the sacrifice bid thereby increasing the penalty points. The table at the left summarises the various scenarios and outcomes.

In summary, when the opponents are likely to make a game contract, a sacrifice bid which is doubled is viable (i.e. one will still receive a positive relative duplicate score) if one can go down no more than:

Similar reasoning can be drawn for sacrifices against potential slam and partscore contracts and cases where one assumes that the contract will not be doubled.

When the opponents are likely to make a small slam contract, a sacrifice bid which is doubled is viable if one can go down no more than

When the opponents are likely to make a grand slam contract, a sacrifice bid which is doubled is viable if one can go down no more than

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