Problem with three-player scoring mechanic

It appears to me that you have 3 players all trying to defeat opponents that they MUST (at some point, eventually) have a temporary conditional truce with. This is present in several games (and I particularly enjoy this mechanic).

There are 2 options I see right away (I'll think about it some more, though) that will fix this

OPTION 1:

Weight the scoring for defeating the high bidder.

If you gave half of the bid points to ONLY THE PLAYER WHO SCORED THE MOST TRICKS among the other two, then in the above scenario PlayerA would only score the 2 points IF they won MORE tricks than PlayerC.

This may change the dynamic, however, since it would pit the two players in a truce against each other (PlayerA and PlayerC in this case) in a "sub-battle", but it would definitely keep PlayerC from throwing the hand in favor of PlayerB.

OPTION 2:

Make the losing high-bid player choose from the following 2 options:

a) the two other players each GAIN 1/2 of the points bid,

OR

b) the high-bid player LOSES the full points bid.

This would fix the problem, in that (presumably) the high-bid player will never throw the game. This option WOULD create a slippery slope toward the endgame, but this is not uncommon, especially in games like Backgammon, Chess, Stratego, Risk, etc... Even Bridge, Hearts and Spades get difficult to win near the endgame if something like this sways the score.

It would also give the option for, say, the INVERSE of this rule, in which the winning high-bid player may opt to have the other two players LOSE 1/2 of the bid points. This would allow a player who was behind to gain a fighting chance near the endgame.

**NOTE: Either way, (win or lose) the high-bid player would choose the scoring each round.

(This will also make bids slightly higher, in that the high-bid player not only has high scoring potential, but MUCH MORE control over the flow of the game - which could lead to upsets if the high-bid player gets greedy, needing scoring control, and overbids for the hand... ultimately leading to higher bids ovreall in an attempt to gain scoring control)

(Example - PlayerA and PlayerC each have 27 points, and PlayerB has 12. PlayerB bids 8 and wins. he can gain 8 points, but this will put the score at 27-20-27, which will make playing the next hand just as tense for PlayerB, since each of the other players needs to score only 1/3 the amount of points that PlayerB does in order to win. By choosing to have the other two players LOSE 4 points each, the score becomes 23-12-23, giving PlayerB at least one more round to gain ground before the situation becomes tense again.)

I think that the rule where you must win a bid AFTER 31 points could ultimately lead to stalls, since until EVERY player is above 31 points, there can be no guarantee for endgame. I will think about it though, because it DOES seem to fit the feel of the mechanics, and could potentially work.

Great minds think alike? ;) What if there's no choice and instead you make the rule like this:

The two other players each GAIN 1/2 of the points bid, unless that would result in one (or both) of them of having 31 points or more in which case: the high-bid player LOSES the full points bid.

I guess that would make for a tense and interesting end-game, because you can only win by winning a bid and then winning the hand. A potential problem is that the game takes very long before one player is finally able to manage to get to 31 points.

...which pit one player against 2 others, like Calabresella:

http://www.pagat.com/tresset/calabres.html

and Klabberjass:

http://www.pagat.com/jass/klabberjass.html

seem to solve this issue by playing a fixed number of hands.