Spades Rules

Setup

Spades uses a standard 52-card deck with no jokers. Four players sit around the table. Opposite players are partners. In this online version, you sit South with North as your partner. West and East are the opposing partnership.

Shuffle and deal the entire deck so each player receives 13 cards. There is no draw pile and no discard pile. All choices come from the cards in hand, the bids already made, the suits that have been led, and whether spades have been broken.

Card ranking

Cards rank ace high, then king, queen, jack, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, and two. The ranking is the same in every suit. A higher card in the led suit beats a lower card in that suit, but any legal spade beats all non-spade cards.

Bidding

Before trick play starts, each player bids the number of tricks they expect to win. Partners do not bid together, but their bids combine into one team contract. If you bid 4 and North bids 3, your partnership contract is 7. Your side must win at least seven tricks to make the bid.

A good bid counts likely winners without pretending every high card is safe. Aces are strong. Kings are strong when you have support or when the ace is likely to appear early. Long spade holdings are powerful because spades are trump. Short suits can also create trumping chances once you are void.

Nil bids

A nil bid means you promise to take zero tricks. If you succeed, the nil earns a bonus. If you take even one trick, the nil fails and creates a penalty. Nil is best when your hand has low cards, few spades, and no unsupported high cards that might be forced to win.

Turn Order and Legal Plays

A trick is one card from each player. The first card played sets the led suit. Every other player must follow that suit if possible. If clubs are led and you have a club, you must play a club. If you have no clubs, you may play any card, including a spade.

1. The leader plays one card to start the trick.
2. Each other player follows the led suit if possible.
3. A player who cannot follow suit may play any card.
4. The highest spade wins if any spades were played.
5. If no spade was played, the highest card in the led suit wins.
6. The trick winner collects the trick and leads next.

Spades as Trump

Spades are always trump. Even the 2 of spades beats the ace of hearts if hearts were led and the spade was played by someone who had no hearts. A higher spade beats a lower spade, so the queen of spades beats the 9 of spades in the same trick.

Trump does not let you ignore the led suit. If diamonds are led and you have a diamond, you must play a diamond. You can play a spade only when spades are led or when you are void in the led suit.

Breaking spades

Spades cannot normally be led until spades are broken. Spades break when someone plays a spade to a trick because they cannot follow the led suit. Once that happens, the winner of a later trick may lead spades. If a player has only spades left, they may lead spades even before they are broken.

Scoring

After all 13 tricks are complete, count how many tricks each partnership won. If a team makes at least its bid, it scores 10 points for each bid trick plus one point for each overtrick. If a team bids 6 and wins 8 tricks, it scores 62: sixty for the bid and two bags for the extra tricks.

If a team fails to make its bid, it loses 10 points for each bid trick. A team that bids 7 and wins only 6 tricks scores -70. This is why accurate bidding matters more than simply winning as many tricks as possible.

Bags

Bags are overtricks. They are worth one point each in the hand, but many Spades tables apply a 100-point penalty when a partnership accumulates ten bags. Our online hand tracks bags so you can see the pressure that overtricks create.

Nil scoring

A nil bid is scored separately from the partnership contract. A successful nil earns a bonus, while a failed nil creates a penalty. The partner of a nil bidder still tries to make the team contract and may need to cover the nil bidder by taking dangerous tricks.

Examples

Example 1: Your team bids 7. You win exactly 7 tricks. Your team scores 70 points. No bags are added because you did not take extra tricks.

Example 2: Your team bids 5 and wins 7 tricks. Your team scores 52 points and takes 2 bags. That hand looks good, but too many hands like it can create a bag penalty.

Example 3: West leads the ace of clubs. North has no clubs and plays the 4 of spades. East follows with a club, and you follow with a club. North wins because a spade was legally played. Spades are now broken.

Example 4: You bid nil and later get stuck winning a trick with the king of hearts. Your nil fails even if your partnership makes the total team contract. Nil requires zero tricks from the bidder, not just low team score.

Contract examples with partners

Partnership scoring is what makes Spades different from a solo trick game. If you bid 2 and your partner bids 5, your team contract is 7. It does not matter which partner wins the seven tricks, unless one partner also bid nil. Your side can make the contract with you taking five and your partner taking two, or with your partner taking all seven. What matters is the combined team total, plus any separate nil result.

When a nil bid is involved, the non-nil partner often has two jobs at once: cover the nil bidder by winning dangerous tricks, and still reach the partnership contract. If South bids nil and North bids 4, North must try to win enough tricks while keeping South from being forced into one. That is why low cards, suit length, and carefully timed leads are just as important as high spades.

Common Mistakes

Overbidding unsupported kings

A king is not always a guaranteed trick. If you hold a bare king in a short suit, the ace may take it or an opponent may trump the suit later. Count support and suit length before treating kings as automatic winners.

Trumping partner winners

If your partner is already winning a trick, spending a spade can waste trump and add an unnecessary bag. Save spades for tricks your side is losing or for endgame control.

Forgetting the contract

Once your team has enough tricks, extra winners can become dangerous. Shift from collecting tricks to avoiding bags unless you need to set the opponents.

Leading spades too casually

Once spades are broken, leading spades can pull trump out of every hand. That is useful when your team has strong high spades or needs to stop opponents from trumping side-suit winners. It is dangerous when your partner is short on trump or protecting a nil. Before leading spades, ask whether your side benefits from shortening the trump supply.

Ignoring table position

Playing last to a trick is powerful because you know whether the trick is already safe. If partner is winning and opponents have both played, you can discard a loser. If an opponent is winning and you are last, you can decide whether the trick is worth a spade. Playing second is harder because two players still act after you. Conservative second-seat play often saves winners for clearer spots.

Endgame Planning

The last four tricks often decide whether a bid succeeds, fails, or turns into bags. Keep a rough count of high spades that have appeared. If the ace, king, and queen of spades are gone and you hold the jack, that jack may now be the master trump. If many spades remain unseen, a side-suit ace is less safe because someone may be void and ready to trump it.

Also track suits that players have shown out of. When West discards on clubs, West is void in clubs for the rest of the hand. Leading clubs later may let West trump unless your team wants that reaction. Spades rewards this memory work: every void, every failed nil cover, and every spent trump changes the value of the remaining cards.