How to play Spades
The rules of Spades, and a game played out one move at a time.
The rules are below, and Spades has more of them than most. If you would rather watch than read, press play: we deal one hand on the real table and stop on every move to say what just happened, what you could do, and which rule it was.
Press play and we deal a short game of Spades on the real table. It stops on every move and says what just happened and what you could do next.
Four people, two sides
Spades takes exactly four. You play with the person sitting across from you, against the two on your left and right. One standard pack, no jokers, dealt out whole, so everybody holds thirteen.
The player after the dealer bids first and leads the first card. The deal moves on one seat every hand, so that job goes round the table.
The bid
Before anyone plays, each of you says how many of the thirteen tricks you expect to take, anything from zero to thirteen. The bids go round in order and everyone hears them. Your bid and your partner's add up to your side's contract.
Count honestly. Aces and high spades are usually tricks. A king is a trick when the ace has already gone. Everything else is a hope.
A bid of zero is nil. It says you will take no trick at all, and it is judged on you alone. Hold it and your side gets a hundred. Take even one trick and your side loses a hundred.
Playing a trick
The leader plays any card. Everybody else, in turn, has to follow the suit that was led if they can. If you hold none of it, play anything, including a spade.
Spades are always trump. The highest spade on the table takes the trick. With no spade in it, the highest card of the suit led takes it, and the ace is high. Whoever takes a trick leads the next one.
You cannot lead a spade until spades are broken, which means a spade has been played on an earlier trick. The one exception is a hand that holds nothing but spades.
Scoring, bags and the end
Make your side's contract and you score ten a trick you bid, plus one for each trick over. Miss it and you lose ten a trick you bid. The tricks a nil bidder takes still count toward their partner's contract, even while they cost the nil.
Those extra tricks are bags, and your side keeps a running count. Every tenth bag takes a hundred off your score, which is why winning a trick you did not need can hurt.
The first side to 500 wins the match. A side that falls to minus 200 loses it. That is a long evening with four people who know the game, and in our opinion that is the point.