How to Play Spades
Spades is a partnership trick-taking game, and the thing that makes it Spades rather than any other trick game is this: you are punished for winning too much. Take more tricks than you bid and the extras pile up as bags, and every ten bags cost you a hundred points.
That single rule turns it from "win as many tricks as possible" into a game of estimating precisely, which is much more interesting.
The setup
Four players in two fixed partnerships. Partners sit across from each other — seats 1 and 3 against seats 2 and 4. The whole deck is dealt, thirteen cards each.
Spades are always trump. A spade beats any card of any other suit, regardless of what was led.
Play to 500 points.
Bidding
Before any cards are played, each player says how many tricks they expect to take. Your team's contract is the sum of both partners' bids.
If you bid 4 and your partner bids 3, your team must take at least 7 tricks.
- Make the contract: 10 points per bid trick. A contract of 7 scores 70.
- Miss it: minus 10 per bid trick. That same 7 becomes −70.
- Overtricks: 1 point each — and one bag each.
Bidding is the whole game. Bid too low and you collect bags; bid too high and you go set. Most experienced players bid slightly under what they think they can take, because the cost is asymmetric: an extra trick you did not bid costs you one point, while a trick you bid and missed costs ten.
Bags — the rule people forget
Every overtrick is a bag, and they accumulate across rounds. When you reach ten bags, you lose 100 points and the counter rolls back by ten.
A hundred points is roughly a made contract of 10. So a season of sloppy overbidding quietly undoes several good rounds. It is the most common way beginners lose while feeling like they are winning.
The practical upshot: if your team has already made its contract and the remaining tricks are not needed, dump them. Play low, let the opponents take them, and keep your bag count down.
Nil
Bidding nil means claiming you will take no tricks at all.
- Make it: +100
- Take even one trick: −100
Your partner still bids normally, and their bid alone becomes the team's contract. Tricks you take while nil do not help that contract — they only break your nil.
Nil is worth attempting with a hand full of low cards, very few spades, and no awkward middling cards that will be forced to win late. The danger is a lone high card in a short suit: once your side suits are exhausted you may be forced to play it.
A good partner protects a nil by taking tricks aggressively, covering the cards the nil bidder might otherwise be forced to win.
Playing a hand
You must follow the led suit if you can. Only when void may you play anything, including a spade.
Spades cannot be led until they have been "broken" — until someone has played a spade while void in the led suit. The exception is a hand of nothing but spades.
Highest spade wins the trick. If no spade was played, the highest card of the led suit wins.
Strategy that matters
Count your sure tricks, then add for shortness. Aces and protected kings are near-certain. But a void or a singleton in a side suit is worth close to a trick too, because it lets you trump in — provided you have spades to spare.
Lead your side-suit aces early, while opponents still have to follow. Wait too long and someone will be void and trump them.
Watch your partner's bid. If they bid 5 and you bid 1, the contract is theirs to make and your job is to feed them tricks, not compete for them.
Once the contract is safe, stop winning. This is the habit that separates players who understand bags from players who do not.
Playing here
Play against bots — which works offline — or start a table and share the link. Partners are assigned across the table, and any seat still empty when you start is filled by a bot.
The bots bid from a hand estimate that accounts for trump length rather than just high cards, and they bid slightly under it, which is the standard conservative line. They do not bid nil: nil needs partnership signalling to be anything but a coin flip.
Bids are public the moment they are made, as they would be at a table. Hands are only ever sent to their owner.
Common questions
Why can I not lead a spade? Spades have not been broken yet. Someone must play one while void in another suit first.
What happens if we take more tricks than we bid? You score them at one point each, but each is also a bag. Ten bags costs 100 points.
Does my nil partner's tricks help our contract? No. A nil bidder's tricks break the nil and do nothing for the partnership contract.
Can both partners bid nil? In some house rules, yes. Here one nil per team is the practical case, and the bot will not bid it.
What is a "set"? Missing your contract. Your team scores minus ten per trick bid.
Last updated 2026-08-22