Spades Rules

Spades is a highly popular American card game invented in the 1930s. Rare outside of the United States until the mid-1990s, with the advent of the Internet and online gaming the popularity of Spades has spread worldwide. This is an excellent game for spending a night with a small group of friends.

Spades is a plain-trick based game where the suit of spades is always trump. One usually plays Spades with four partnered players, but there are also variations for two, three, and six players. Grab a deck of cards and some friends and follow these Spades rules for a guaranteed night of fun.

Spades for four players

Place the four players in partnerships of two. The partners should sit opposite of each other. Dealing and play both run clockwise. After establishing partnerships, all you need is a standard deck of 52 cards. The cards rank from highest to lowest with aces being high in each suit.

1. First, deal

Choose the first dealer at random. You can use a roll of the dice to do this. The deal should then run clockwise. Shuffle the cards well and deal one card at a time, starting with the player to the left of the dealer, until you’ve dealt out all cards in the deck. Everyone should have 13 cards at this point.

2. Then bid

All four players in Spades must bid a number of tricks. Each team will combine together the bids of their two partners. The combined total of the two partners represents the number of tricks that team must win in order to score.

Bidding continues clockwise around the table until everyone has bid a number. Spades rules allow players to bid any number from zero to thirteen. Unlike other games, such as Poker, that also involve bidding, each bid is not required to be higher than the last, and players may pass if they wish.

There is only one round of bidding in Spades, and players cannot be change or take back their bids once they make them. A Nil bid is a bid of zero tricks. When a player bids Nil this announces that they will not win any tricks. The player will win an extra bonus for this if they succeed, but will also earn a penalty if they fail.

The team then must win the number of tricks bid by the Nil bidder’s partner. If a player doesn’t want to try to win the Nil bonus (or avoid the Nil penalty) then they must bid an amount of at least one.

If you’re feeling especially confident, you might try for a bid of Blind Nil. A Blind Nil is bidding zero before you actually look at the cards in your hand. After everyone has made a bid, each player may then exchange two cards with their partner. This is done by having the player discard two cards face down in the center of the table. Their partner then picks up the discarded cards and discards two of their own cards in exchange. House rules usually state that a Blind Nil is only biddable by a player when their team is losing by about 100 points.

A Double Blind Nil is possible if both team members bid a Blind Nil. If the team is successful at a Double Blind Nil, they win the game outright.

3. Next, play the hand

The player seated to the dealer's left can lead with any card but a spade to the first trick. Then, going clockwise, each player must in turn follow suit if they can. If they are unable to follow suit, the player can then play a card of any suit.

The highest ranked spade played automatically wins any trick containing a spade. If no one plays a spade, the highest card of the suit led wins the trick. The winner of each trick leads to the next one. No player may lead with a spade until either a player has played a spade (on the lead of another suit), or the leader has nothing but spades left in their hand.

Keeping Score

Designate one of the players as the scorekeeper before beginning play. The scorekeeper should then write all the bids down, so that during play (and afterwards, when the score is tallied) all the information about bids is available to every player.

When the hand is finished, the scorekeeper should record each player’s score next to their bids. It’s advisable to keep a running tally of the scores as this allows players to easily see everyone’s total points earned.

The team that takes at least as many tricks as their bid called for receives a score equal to 10 times the initial bid. Additional tricks, called overtricks, or “bags,” are worth one extra point.

A team that, over several deals, gains ten or more bags will have 100 points deducted from their score. Any bags beyond those ten carry over to the next round of overtricks. Therefore, if a team reaches twenty overtricks they lose another 100 points.

If a team doesn’t successfully make their bid, they lose 10 points for each trick they bid.

If a bid of Nil is successful, then the Nil bidder's team goes on to receive 100 points, in addition to the points won (or lost) by the partner of the Nil bidder for tricks made.

If a Nil bid fails and the bidder takes at least one trick, then the bidder's team loses 100 points.  The team, however, still gains the points earned for the partner's bid. When a Nil bidder fails, the tricks won by the Nil bidder don’t count towards making the partner's bid, but do count as bags for the team.

A Blind Nil bid, if successful, scores twice as many points for the team as an ordinary Nil. So, add 200 points if the bid is successful, but subtract 200 if the bid fails. This makes a Blind Nil bid a highly risky, yet exciting, undertaking.  

The team who reaches 500 points first wins the game. If both teams reach 500 points in a single deal, the side with the higher score automatically wins.