Slam-seeking conventions Slam-seeking conventions Slam-seeking conventions are codified artificial bids used in the card game contract bridge. Bidding and making a small slam (12 tricks) or grand slam (13 tricks) yields high bonuses ranging from 500 to 1500 points. However, the risk is also high as failure to fulfill the slam contract also means failure to score the bonus points for a game (300-500). Conventions have been devised to maximise the opportunity for success whilst minimising the risk of failure. Contract bridge bidding systems are mainly "natural" (most bids have an obvious meaning) or "artificial" (many bids have a meaning unrelated to
Optimum contract and par contract and that neither side could improve by further bidding. It will either be equal to the optimum contract of one side or it will exceed the optimum contract of both sides. If the latter, it is only considered par if the doubled penalty is less than the value of the opposing optimum contract. The par result is that score that arises from the par contract and on which neither side could reasonably improve by changing their line of play. Game theoreticians would refer to such a par result as a Nash equilibrium. The term par score originated in the game