Spades

What you need & setup

1. Form two partnerships of two; partners sit across from each other.
2. Shuffle a standard 52-card deck and deal 13 cards to each player.
3. Starting left of the dealer, each player bids the number of tricks they expect to win (0 to 13). A bid of zero is called nil.
4. Add the two partners' bids together — that total is the contract the team must make.
5. The player to the dealer's left leads the first trick (in many groups, any card except a spade).

Turn sequence

1. The leader plays any card, except that spades cannot be led until spades are "broken" (played on an earlier trick) or the leader has only spades left.
2. Going clockwise, each player must follow suit if able — if diamonds are led and you hold the 9♦, you must play a diamond.
3. If you cannot follow suit, you may play any card, including a spade. Playing a spade this way is how spades get broken.
4. The trick goes to the highest spade played, or to the highest card of the led suit if no spade appears.
5. The trick winner leads the next trick.
6. After all 13 tricks, compare each team's tricks won to its bid and score the hand.

Bidding Your Tricks

After looking at your hand, you announce how many of the 13 tricks you think you will personally win. Aces, kings, and long spade holdings are your main sources of tricks.

Your bid and your partner's bid combine into a single team contract. If you bid 3 and your partner bids 4, your team must win at least 7 tricks together.

A bid of nil is a promise to win zero tricks. It scores a big bonus if you succeed and a big penalty if you win even one trick, while your partner still tries to make their own bid.

Following Suit

You must play a card of the led suit whenever you have one. If hearts are led and you hold the 10♥, you must play a heart.

When you are void in the led suit you may play anything. Throwing a spade is called cutting or trumping, and it usually wins the trick.

Discarding a non-spade when void wins nothing, but it is a good way to unload cards that could accidentally win tricks later — especially important for a nil bidder.

Spades Are Always Trump

Unlike many trick-taking games, the trump suit never changes: it is always spades. Any spade beats any card of any other suit.

If more than one spade is played to a trick, the highest spade wins. So the 2♠ beats the A♥, but loses to the 3♠.

Spades may not be led until they are broken — someone must first play a spade on a trick because they could not follow suit. Once broken, spades can be led freely.

Winning a Trick

If no spade is played, the trick is won by the highest card of the suit that was led. Aces are high.

If one or more spades appear, the highest spade wins regardless of what was led.

The winner collects the trick face down and leads next. Keep tricks in a countable pile — everyone needs to know how many each side has taken.

Scoring and Bags

If your team wins at least as many tricks as it bid, you score 10 points per bid trick. A team that bid 7 and won 8 scores 70 points plus 1 for the extra trick.

Each trick over your bid is called a bag or sandbag and is worth just 1 point — but collect 10 bags across the game and your team loses 100 points.

If your team falls short of its bid, you lose 10 points per bid trick (a failed bid of 7 is minus 70).

A successful nil is commonly worth 100 bonus points; a failed nil costs 100. Games are usually played to 500 points.

Scoring & how the game ends

• Make your team bid: 10 points per trick bid.
• Each overtrick (bag): 1 point, but a penalty of 100 points when a team accumulates 10 bags.
• Fail your bid: lose 10 points per trick bid.
• Successful nil bid: commonly +100 points; failed nil: commonly -100 points.
• First team to 500 points wins (some groups play to 300 for a shorter game).

Winning: Be the first partnership to reach the target score, usually 500 points, by making your bids.

Common variations

These are genuine regional and house-rule differences — none of them is “the one true way” to play. Agree with your table before starting.

• Cutthroat (three-player) and other player counts

  Spades can be played without partners by 2, 3, or 6 players. In three-player cutthroat, everyone bids and scores alone; two-player versions deal cards through a draw process instead.

  Common: Casual play and online rooms.

• Blind nil

  A player may bid nil before looking at their cards, typically for double the nil bonus and penalty. Often only allowed when a team is losing by 100 or more.

  Common: Widely used in North American play.

• Jokers high

  Two jokers are added as the highest trumps (big joker over little joker), usually with two low cards removed to keep the deal even. This is the base for the related game Joker Spades.

  Common: Common in many American communities.

• No bags

  Overtricks simply score 1 point each with no 10-bag penalty, making aggressive play safer and the game friendlier for beginners.

• Ten-for-two hundred ("Boston" targets)

  Some groups award bonuses for winning all 13 tricks or use different game targets such as 300 or 250 for faster games.

  Common: House rules vary widely.

A little history

Spades is generally traced to the United States in the twentieth century and is descended from the Whist family of trick-taking games by most accounts.

It spread widely through colleges, workplaces, and the military, and later boomed online.