How to play
How to Play Spades
A partnership trick-taker where the bid is the whole game.
- Players
- 4 players
- Play time
- 45 min
- Published
- Traditional
- Publisher
- Traditional
What you are trying to do
Win 500 points as a partnership. Each hand, your team bids the number of tricks it will take; making the bid earns points, missing it costs you.
Because the bid decides the score, Spades is less about winning tricks and more about predicting them accurately.
The deal and the bid
Four players, two teams, partners sitting opposite. Everyone gets 13 cards from a standard deck.
Starting left of the dealer, each player bids a number from 0 to 13 — how many tricks they expect to take. Your team's bid is the sum of your two bids. Nil (zero) is a special bid with its own bonus and penalty.
How tricks work
The player left of the dealer leads the first trick. You must follow suit if you can; the highest card of the led suit wins unless a spade is played.
Spades are always trump, but they cannot be led until they have been broken — that is, until someone has discarded a spade because they could not follow suit.
Scoring
Make your team's bid and you score 10 points per trick bid. Every trick above the bid is a bag worth 1 point, but ten bags cost you 100 points.
Miss the bid and you lose 10 points per trick bid. A nil bid is worth +100 if that player takes no tricks and −100 if they take even one.
First to 500
The game ends when a team reaches 500 points. Many tables also end the game at −200, so a disastrous run does not drag on forever.
Spades: common questions
What is a bag in Spades?
A bag is an overtrick — a trick you won above your team's bid. Each bag is worth 1 point, but collecting ten bags deducts 100 points, so sandbagging is a real strategy.
Can spades be led at any time?
No. Spades cannot be led until they are broken, meaning a spade has already been played as a discard because a player could not follow suit.
What does bidding nil mean?
You are predicting you will take zero tricks. Make it and your team gains 100 points; take even one trick and you lose 100. Partners usually cover a nil bid by winning tricks early.