Play Some BishStrategy · Chapter 7
What a call tells you
When someone calls, they have told the table something about their hand. Use it. And your own cards tell you how their call is likely to go.
Assume the caller holds the Jack of trump. They do about 8 times in 10.
If you hold the Jack yourself, your partner's call goes bait 6% of the time, against 18% when you don't. If an opponent holds the Jack, the caller goes bait 27%.
Your partner's trump, Aces and 9 all help too. Tables below.
Does the caller have it?
In 289,972 normal calls by the computer players, the caller held the Jack of trump in their six cards 84% of the time, and in nine cards, after the kitty, 86%. In 10,585 real hands on the site it was 77%. People call without the Jack more often than the computer does: 67% of human callers held it, against 82.5% for the computer.
So play as if the Jack is with the caller, unless you have good reason to think not.
What you hold changes the odds
Your partner has called. You look at your own cards. This is how often the call goes bait.
| You hold | Goes bait |
|---|---|
| The Jack of trump | 6% |
| No Jack of trump | 18% |
| The 9 of trump | 11% |
| No 9 of trump | 19% |
Trump you hold
| Trump in your hand | Goes bait |
|---|---|
| None | 23% |
| One | 19% |
| Two | 14% |
| Three | 8% |
| Four or more | 3% |
Aces you hold
| Side Aces in your hand | Goes bait |
|---|---|
| None | 20% |
| One | 16% |
| Two | 11% |
| Three | 8% |
Each trump you hold takes about 4 to 6 points off the bait rate. The Jack by itself takes off 12.
If you hold the Jack
When the other team calls and you hold the Jack of their trump, they are in more trouble than usual. If you are defending a forced call, the numbers in Defending a forced call go further.
| The Jack of trump is | Goes bait |
|---|---|
| With an opponent | 27% |
| Not with an opponent | 17% |
You are the opponent here: you hold the Jack, and the call goes bait 27% of the time, against 17% when neither of you holds it. When the call is forced the gap is wider: 48% against 30%.
The overall bait rate for a normal call is 18%. For a forced call it is 31%.
Your partner called
Your partner called hearts
You hold the Jack and the 9 of hearts, so your partner called without them. When you hold the Jack the call goes bait 6% of the time. Lead trump when you win the lead, and the Jack will do its job.
How we know
We dealt 400,000 hands and let the computer players bid. For each normal call (289,972) we recorded the cards in the partner's and opponents' hands and whether the call went bait. A half-bait counts as a bait. The Jack figures for people come from 10,585 real hands on the site.
The other players always play the same careful way, and real people are messier.
Updated 2026-11-05.