Spades
Bid your tricks, cover your partner, dodge the bags.
About Spades
Spades is a partnership bidding game for four, played in two teams sitting across from each other. Before any card is played, each player bids the number of tricks they expect to take. Make your team’s combined bid and you score ten points per trick bid; miss it and you lose ten per trick bid. Spades are always trump.
Two rules create almost all of the drama. Nil is a bid of zero: pull it off and your team gains a hundred points, take a single trick and you lose a hundred. Bags are the tricks you take beyond your bid — each one is worth a single point now and a hundred-point penalty once you accumulate ten, so overbidding and underbidding are both punished.
You must follow suit when you can, and spades cannot be led until a spade has been played on another suit. The three bots bid and count like real partners, and the post-game review grades every card you played against the better option.
- Players
- 4 players (you + 3 bots)
- Type
- Card game
- Price
- Free
- Account
- Not required
Spades rules
- 1.You and your partner across the table bid how many tricks you will take.
- 2.Make your combined bid for 10 points per trick; miss it and you lose 10 per trick bid.
- 3.Bidding Nil means taking zero tricks — worth +100 if you pull it off, −100 if you do not.
- 4.Follow suit if you can. Spades cannot be led until a spade has been played on another suit.
- 5.Every trick over your bid is a bag; ten bags costs you 100 points.
How to win at Spades
- Bid your winners, not your hopes
- Count the tricks you are confident of: the Ace and King of spades, any long spade suit beyond three, and off-suit Aces. Bid those and nothing else. A bid built on maybes is how teams lose a hundred points in two hands.
- Cover your partner’s Nil
- When your partner bids Nil, your job stops being about your own tricks. Lead high, take everything you can, and burn your Aces early so nothing is left that could force a trick onto them.
- Watch the bag count, not just the score
- At eight or nine bags you are one loose trick from losing a hundred points. In that state, deliberately dumping a trick you could win is the correct play, and it is the single most commonly missed decision in the game.
- Do not waste high spades on won tricks
- Trumping a trick your partner already controls throws away a winner. Before you cut in, check whether the trick is already yours — a spade spent unnecessarily is a trick you will need three hands from now.
Spades questions
- How does bidding work in Spades?
- Each of the four players bids the number of tricks they expect to win. Partners’ bids are added together, and the team must take at least that many tricks to score ten points per trick bid.
- What is a Nil bid worth?
- A successful Nil bid is worth one hundred points. If the player who bid Nil takes even one trick, the team loses one hundred points instead.
- What are bags?
- Bags are tricks taken beyond your team’s bid. Each is worth one point, but accumulating ten of them costs your team one hundred points.
- When can spades be led?
- Only after a spade has been played on a trick of another suit, which is called breaking spades.
- Can I review my play afterwards?
- Yes. The post-game review grades each card you played, shows the stronger alternative where one existed, and explains why it was better.