How to Play Spades
Spades is a trick-taking game for four players in two fixed partnerships (seats across from each other are partners). Each side bids how many tricks they’ll take, then tries to hit that number exactly; spades are always trump. First team to 500 points wins.
The deal
Section titled “The deal”A standard 52-card deck, dealt out completely: 13 cards to each player.
Bidding
Section titled “Bidding”Starting with the player to the dealer’s left, each player states a bid, the number of tricks they think they’ll personally take, 0 through 13, once around the table, in order. A bid of 0 is “nil”: a declaration that you’ll take zero tricks all hand.
Your team’s contract is the sum of both partners’ bids (nil counts as 0 toward that sum). There’s no blind nil in this implementation; bidding 0 always means a standard, hand-seen nil.
Playing a trick
Section titled “Playing a trick”The player to the dealer’s left leads the first trick; after that, the trick winner leads next. You must follow suit if you can. Spades is always trump, so if you can’t follow the suit led, you may play anything, including a spade to win the trick.
Spades can’t be led until a spade has already been played on some earlier trick, unless your whole hand is spades, in which case you have no other option.
Example trick
Section titled “Example trick”Hearts are led:
| Seat | Plays | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Lead | 6♥ | opens the trick |
| Next | 9♥ | follows suit |
| Next | 3♠ | void in hearts, trumps in, breaks spades |
| Next | K♥ | follows suit, but can’t beat the trump |
The 3♠ wins despite being a low card; any trump beats any non-trump. Spades is now broken for the rest of the hand.
Scoring
Section titled “Scoring”At the end of the hand, add up each team’s total bid and total tricks won.
- If the team’s total tricks meet or beat their total bid, they score 10 points per bid trick, plus 1 point for every trick over the bid (an “overtrick,” also called a bag).
- If the team’s total tricks fall short of their bid, they score -10 points per bid trick instead. No partial credit, and no bags.
- If both partners bid nil (team bid = 0), there’s no positive contract to hit. The team just scores 1 point per trick actually taken, and every one of those tricks counts as a bag.
Nil, scored separately per player on top of the team math above:
- Bid nil and took exactly 0 tricks: +100 for that player’s team.
- Bid nil but took 1 or more tricks: -100 for that player’s team.
A nil bidder’s tricks (if they take any) still count toward the team’s overall trick total for the main bid/bag math above; the nil bonus/penalty is additional, not a replacement.
Bags (overtricks) accumulate per team, hand over hand. Every time a team’s running bag count reaches 10 or more, they lose 100 points and the count resets to the remainder (so going from 8 bags to 11 in one hand costs 100 points and leaves the team at 1 bag, not 11).
Worked example
Section titled “Worked example”Team A bids 4 + 3 = 7 and takes 9 tricks: they made their bid with 2 overtricks. Score: 10 × 7 + 2 = 72, and 2 bags added to their running total.
Team A bids 6 and takes only 4: they were set. Score: -60, no bags.
One partner bids nil and takes 0 tricks while the other bids 5 and the team takes 5 tricks total (0 from the nil bidder, 5 from the other): team contract is 5, they made it exactly with 0 overtricks, 10 × 5 = 50, plus the nil bonus of 100, for 150 on the hand.
Game end
Section titled “Game end”First team to reach 500 wins. If both teams cross 500 on the very same hand and end up exactly tied, that’s not allowed to stand as a tie; another hand is played instead. If both cross 500 but aren’t tied, the higher total wins even if that team wasn’t the one who “just” crossed the line.