Spades
Spades is a game about promises. You say how many tricks you will win before a card is played, and then you have to deliver — no more and, painfully, no fewer.
You are South and North is your partner. Bid first, then click a card to play it.
| Players | 4, in two fixed partnerships |
|---|---|
| Deck | One standard 52-card deck, 13 cards each |
| Play time | 20–30 minutes to reach 500 |
| Difficulty | Easy rules, unforgiving scoring |
How to play Spades
Four players sit in two fixed partnerships, each opposite their partner, and the whole 52-card deck is dealt out so everyone holds thirteen cards. Spades are permanently trump — there is no turn-up and nothing to choose. Within every suit the cards run in the ordinary order, ace high down to the two.
The bidding
Starting to the dealer's left, every player names the number of tricks they expect to take. There is no passing and no requirement to outbid anyone: all four numbers are simply announced and the two partners' bids are added together. That combined figure is what the team must reach. If you bid four and your partner bids two, your side needs six of the thirteen tricks on offer.
A bid of zero is called nil, and it is a separate promise: you are claiming you will win no tricks at all. Bring it off and your side gains 100 points; take even one trick and you lose 100. Your partner still plays for their own bid either way, which makes nil a two-person problem rather than a solo gamble.
The play
The player left of the dealer leads, but may not lead a spade to the first trick. After that, follow the led suit if you hold it and play anything if you do not. A trick is won by the highest spade in it, or, if nobody played a spade, by the highest card of the suit led. Spades cannot be led until they have been broken — that is, until somebody has already played one on a different suit — or until the player on lead holds nothing else.
Scoring
Make your contract and you score ten points per trick bid, plus one point for every extra trick. Those extras are called bags, and they are a slow-acting poison: the moment your accumulated bags reach ten, 100 points are struck off your score and the count resets. Miss your bid and you simply lose ten points per trick bid — the tricks you did win count for nothing. First side to 500 wins.
Strategy
Spades rewards accurate arithmetic more than bold play. Almost every hand is won or lost during the bidding.
Bid your spades, then count aces separately
The reliable way to estimate a hand is to count tricks you can defend rather than high cards you like the look of. Your ace of spades is a trick. Your king of spades is a trick if you also hold a small one to protect it. Aces in side suits are usually tricks; kings in side suits often are not, because someone will lead through them. Add them up honestly and bid that number.
Length in spades is worth more than height
Five small spades will out-earn two big ones over a full hand. Once the other players are void in a side suit, every spade you still hold becomes a winner by default. This is why players with long trump holdings can afford to bid a trick or two beyond their obvious high cards.
Nil needs short suits with low cards, not a weak hand
New players bid nil because their hand looks bad. That is the wrong test. A successful nil needs no cards that are forced to win: two or three very low cards in each suit, no unguarded kings, and above all no long suit that will still be in your hand when everyone else has run out. A hand with 2-3-4 in three suits is a far better nil than a hand with one ace and twelve middling cards.
Watch your bag count before you take a free trick
This is the mistake that quietly loses matches. A team at nine bags that wins two overtricks has not gained two points; it has lost ninety-eight. When your bags are high, dump winners deliberately — throw an ace under a partner's trick, duck a lead you could take — and stay exactly on your bid.
When your partner bids nil, you play their hand as well as yours
Cover them. Lead your high cards to take tricks they might otherwise be forced into, and when a trick is heading their way, win it yourself. Sacrificing your own bid to protect a nil is usually the better arithmetic, because the nil is worth 100 and your bid is worth a fraction of that.
Draw trumps when you are the one with the long spades
If you hold five or six spades, leading them forces the opposition to spend theirs while you still have plenty. Two rounds of spades will usually leave you as the only player with trump, at which point every remaining trick in your hand is safe.
Variants
- Suicide Spades — one member of each partnership is required to bid nil every hand, which turns the game into a study in covering your partner.
- Blind Nil — you may declare nil before looking at your cards, for 200 points instead of 100. Usually only permitted when your side is well behind.
- Whiz — every player must either bid nil or bid the exact number of spades they hold. It removes bidding judgement entirely and makes the play sharper.
- Cutthroat (four solo players) — no partnerships, each player scoring for themselves. Nil becomes far more attractive with nobody to protect you.
- Jokers and the deuce — some tables add two jokers as the top trumps and remove the low diamonds, so hands are fourteen cards and the very top of the trump suit is unpredictable.
- Ten-for-two and mirror bidding — house rules that change how bags are penalised or force bids to match a player's spade count.
Where Spades came from
Spades is unusually easy to date: it is an American invention of the late 1930s, and card historians generally place its origin in the Midwest, with Cincinnati frequently named. It sits in the Whist family and looks like a deliberate simplification of it — Whist's trump-turning replaced by a fixed trump suit, and a bidding round bolted on from the auction games that were fashionable at the time.
Its spread was military. The game was simple enough to be interrupted, which made it ideal for servicemen during the Second World War, and it travelled home with them. David Parlett notes its rapid post-war adoption, and John McLeod's card game archive records the enormous variety of house rules that grew up around it. A second wave came through American college campuses in the 1970s and 1980s, which is where much of the modern bag-penalty scoring was standardised.
Questions people ask about Spades
- Are spades always trump in Spades?
- Yes. Unlike Whist or Euchre there is no trump-turning or trump-calling: the spade suit is trump in every hand, which is why the bidding is about how many tricks you can take rather than what suit you would prefer.
- What is a nil bid worth?
- A successful nil earns your side 100 points, and a failed one costs 100. Your partner still scores or loses separately for their own bid, so a hand where one player bids nil and the other bids five is really two contracts running at once.
- What are bags and why are they bad?
- Bags are overtricks — tricks you win beyond your bid. Each is worth one point immediately, but when your accumulated bags reach ten, you lose 100 points and the counter resets. Winning more tricks than you promised is therefore only mildly good in the short term and expensive in the long term.
- Can I lead a spade whenever I want?
- No. Spades must be broken first, meaning someone has played a spade on a trick where a different suit was led. The only exception is a player who holds nothing but spades, who has no choice.
- What happens if my team misses its bid?
- You lose ten points for every trick you bid, and the tricks you actually won score nothing at all. A team that bids seven and takes six loses seventy points — which is why conservative bidding usually beats optimistic bidding.
- How many points do you need to win?
- 500 in the standard game. Because a missed contract can cost 70 or 80 points and ten bags cost 100, a match can swing completely in two hands, and being ahead is much less safe than it looks.