♠️ Spades
🂡 Cards · 1 playsSpades
Bid the tricks you can actually take, then take exactly that many.
About Spades
Spades is a partnership game in which the bidding matters as much as the play: you and your partner each declare how many tricks you expect, and the pair is scored against the combined figure. Spades trump every other suit and may not be led until someone has been forced to trump, which shapes the whole middle of a hand. Overtricks are not a bonus but a liability — each one becomes a bag, and ten bags cost a hundred points, so a careful player will sometimes throw a winner away on purpose. A Nil bid, promising to take nothing at all, is the highest-value contract on the table and the easiest to break, since a single unavoidable lead can end it.
How to Play
Bid the number of tricks you expect; your bid is added to your partner\'s. Follow the led suit if you can. Spades beat all other suits and cannot be led until broken. Make the combined bid to score. Surplus tricks become bags, and ten bags cost 100 points.
💡 Tips & Strategy
Bid your hand, not your hopes. Count aces and kings as near-certain tricks, high spades as tricks, and be honest about middling cards. Overbidding by one costs the whole contract, and bidding under by one usually costs only a little.
Mind the bags. Taking tricks you did not bid accumulates penalties, so once your contract is safe, actively lose tricks by dropping low cards rather than winning them by accident.
Lead your long side suit early while opponents still have to follow. Later in the hand they will be void and trumping, and the same cards that would have won tricks in trick two are worthless in trick nine.
Watch which spades have gone. Spades are the currency of the endgame and a player who has counted them knows exactly whether their last trump is a winner or a liability.