How to play Spades

Bid your tricks with a partner, break the spades and dodge the bags in the classic four-player trick game.

Spades is the best-known partnership card game in America and one of the great trick-taking games anywhere. Four players sit in two teams, partners facing each other, and spades are always trump. Before each hand every player says how many tricks they will take, and your bid and your partner's bid together are your team's contract. Make it and you score; fall short and you lose the lot; take too many and the extra "bags" come back to bite you. Judging a hand, counting the cards that are out and working with a partner you can't talk to make it a true game of skill.

How to play on skill.games

When you open the game, the settings appear. Choose a difficulty (Easy, Normal, Hard or Crazy) and the length of the match (500 points, the standard game, or 250 for a shorter one), then press PLAY.

The table: you sit at the bottom and your partner Max sits across from you. Lily on your left and Zoe on your right are the other team. A "D" marks the dealer. At the top, the status line says whose turn it is; one chip shows the match score with each team's bags in brackets, and the other shows each team's tricks so far against its contract, such as 3/7.
Bidding: on your turn a panel opens above your hand. Set the number of tricks with minus and plus and press BID, or press NIL to promise that you will take no tricks at all. Each player's bid shows in a bubble by their name, so you know your partner's bid before you make yours if they bid first.
Playing: tap a card or drag it onto the table. Playable cards are lifted and glow; a card that isn't allowed shakes and the status line explains why, such as "You must follow suit" or "Spades aren't broken yet". Each player's badge shows tricks taken against their bid, like 2/4.

After each hand a sheet shows both teams' bids, tricks, contract points, bags, any Nil bonus or penalty, the bag penalty, the hand's score and the match totals; press NEXT HAND to continue. You can also drag cards within your hand to rearrange them. The menu button in the top-left corner pauses, starts a new match or turns the sound off. The match is saved as you play, so you can press CONTINUE later. At the end, the results screen shows the score, the contracts each team made and your statistics.

Rules

The cards. A standard 52-card deck. Aces are high: ace, king, queen, jack, ten and so on down to the two. Spades are always trump.

The deal. The first dealer is chosen at random, and the deal passes to the left after each hand. Every player gets 13 cards, one at a time, starting from the dealer's left.

Bidding. Starting from the dealer's left and going clockwise, each player bids once: a number of tricks from 1 to 13, or Nil. There is no passing and no second round, and a bid doesn't have to beat the one before it. Your bid and your partner's bid added together are your team's contract.

Nil. A Nil bid promises that you will take no tricks at all. If you succeed, your team gets 100 points; if you take even one trick, it loses 100. Your partner's bid still counts on its own: the tricks a Nil bidder takes do not help the partner's contract, but they do count as bags.

The play. The player on the dealer's left leads to the first trick. You must follow the suit that was led if you can; if you can't, you may play any card, including a spade. The highest spade in a trick wins it; if there is no spade, the highest card of the suit led wins. The winner of a trick leads to the next one.

Breaking spades. You may not lead a spade until spades are "broken": until someone has played a spade on a trick because they couldn't follow suit. The only exception is a hand with nothing but spades left.

Scoring. A team that takes at least as many tricks as its contract scores 10 points for each trick bid, plus 1 point for each extra trick. A team that takes fewer loses 10 points for each trick bid; this is being "set".

Bags. Every extra trick is a bag. Bags add up from hand to hand, and when a team reaches 10 bags it loses 100 points and 10 bags are taken off its count; any bags beyond ten carry on to the next ten. So overtricks are worth a point now but cost about nine in the long run.

Winning. The first team to reach the target (500 or 250 points) wins. If both teams reach it in the same hand, the higher score wins; if they are tied, another hand is played.

Strategy tips

Count your sure tricks. Aces, a guarded king, and the ace and king of spades are the backbone of a bid. Long spades win tricks late in the hand, when the other suits run out.
Short suits are tricks too. With a void or a singleton and a few spades to spare, you can trump the other players' winners.
Bid with your partner. If your partner has already bid high, keep your bid honest rather than adding a hopeful extra trick.
Mind the bags. Once your contract is safe, play under the tricks you don't need. Ten bags cost 100 points.
Set the other team when you can. If the opponents are one or two tricks short and there are few tricks left, taking those tricks is worth far more than the bags it costs.
Bid Nil with low cards. A hand with no high spades, plenty of low cards and no lonely kings or queens is a good Nil.
Protect a partner's Nil. Lead your high cards, win tricks early and play high in second seat, so your partner can drop low cards under you.
Attack an opponent's Nil. Lead low cards in suits the Nil bidder still holds, and don't overtake their card when they are winning a trick.
Remember the voids. A player who didn't follow suit has none left, and a player who trumped once will trump that suit again.

Difficulty levels

Your partner always plays at least at Hard, and at Crazy it plays Crazy. The difficulty you choose sets how well your opponents play:

Easy: bids by a rough count of its cards, never bids Nil, and often plays a careless card.
Normal: bids by counting its honours, long spades and short suits, bids Nil with a safe hand, and plays solid cards: it counts what is out, wins the tricks its team needs, ducks extra tricks once the contract is safe, and covers or attacks a Nil.
Hard: tests its hand in many imagined deals before bidding, weighs bags at their real cost, and before each card plays out several possible deals that fit what the others have shown.
Crazy: the strongest: far more imagined deals for every decision, and it also reads the bidding, imagining only deals that fit what each player bid.