What Is Spades?
Spades is a four-player partnership card game where you and your partner try to win exactly the number of tricks you said you would. Before each round, you bid how many tricks you think your hand can win. Meet your bid and score points. Miss it and lose points. Spades are always the trump suit — they beat every other suit.
What You Need
- A standard 52-card deck
- 4 players sitting in two partnerships — partners sit across from each other
- Paper and pen for scoring
Setup
- Partners sit across the table from each other (North-South vs. East-West).
- Deal all 52 cards evenly — 13 cards to each player.
- Each player looks at their hand and decides how many tricks they think they can win.
Bidding
Starting left of the dealer, each player announces a number from 0 to 13. This is how many tricks they’re promising to win. Your partnership’s total bid is your and your partner’s numbers added together. For example, if you bid 3 and your partner bids 4, your team must win at least 7 tricks.
Special Bids
- Nil — You promise to win ZERO tricks. If you succeed, your team gets a bonus 100 points. If you take even one trick, your team loses 100 points. Your partner still plays their own bid normally.
- Blind Nil — Bid Nil before looking at your cards! Double the bonus and penalty (200 points).
How to Play — Step by Step
- The player to the left of the dealer leads any card except a spade. (Spades can’t be led until they’ve been ‘broken.’)
- Going clockwise, each other player must follow suit if they can.
- If you have no cards of the led suit, you can play any card — including a spade.
- The highest card of the suit led wins the trick — UNLESS someone played a spade. Then the highest spade wins.
- The player who wins the trick leads the next one.
- Breaking Spades: Once any player plays a spade (because they couldn’t follow suit), spades are ‘broken’ and any player can lead spades from then on.
- Play all 13 tricks.
Scoring
- Made your bid: Score 10 × your bid. (Bid 5, make 5 = 50 points.)
- Overtricks (bags): Each trick won above your bid scores 1 extra point — but every time your team collects 10 bags total, you lose 100 points. Bags hurt!
- Failed your bid: Lose 10 × your bid.
- Nil made: +100 bonus points.
- Nil failed: −100 points (partner’s tricks still count for their bid).
Winning
First team to reach 500 points wins. If both teams hit 500 in the same round, the higher score wins.
Strategy Tips
- Count your sure winners when bidding — high spades, Aces. Add 1 for a long side suit.
- Don’t accumulate bags. If you’re going to win extra tricks, sometimes it’s better to let opponents win low-stakes tricks.
- Cover your partner’s Nil bid. If your partner goes Nil, play high cards in their suit to take the trick for them.
- Lead trump early once spades are broken — it pulls opponents’ spades out of their hands.