How to play Spades

What you need

• One standard 52-card deck with the jokers removed.
• Four players, sitting as two partnerships with partners opposite each other.
• A pencil and a score sheet with two columns, one per team. Leave room beside each score for that hand's bid, so nobody argues later about what was promised.
• About an hour for a game to 500. If you only have 30 minutes, play to 200, which Bicycle notes is suitable for a short game.

Cards rank in the usual order in every suit: ace high, then king, queen, jack, 10 down to 2. Spades are always trump. Nobody bids a suit, and nothing about trump changes from hand to hand.

Set up the game

1. Pick partners. Seat partners across from each other, so play alternates between teams around the table. Call the seats North, East, South and West on the score sheet; North and South are one team, East and West the other.
2. Choose the first dealer. Bicycle has players draw for high card. After that the deal moves one seat clockwise each hand.
3. Shuffle and deal. Deal the whole deck one card at a time, face down, clockwise, starting with the player on the dealer's left. Everyone ends up with 13 cards.
4. Sort your hand. Group cards by suit. Count your spades and look for aces and kings in the side suits.
5. Agree the house settings before the first bid. Target score (500 is standard), whether nil bids are allowed, and whether blind nil is on the table. Write them at the top of the score sheet.

Playing Spades

1. Bid. Starting left of the dealer and going clockwise, each player says how many tricks they expect to win. There is one round of bidding and no passing. Add the two partners' bids together: that sum is the team's contract.
2. Lead. The player left of the dealer leads the first trick with any card except a spade.
3. Follow suit. Going clockwise, each player must play a card of the suit led if they have one. If you cannot follow, you may play a spade (trumping) or throw away any other card. You are never forced to trump, and you never have to play higher than the card currently winning.
4. Win the trick. The highest spade wins any trick that contains a spade. Otherwise the highest card of the suit led wins. Off-suit discards never win. The winner gathers the four cards face down in front of them and leads the next trick.
5. Breaking spades. You cannot lead a spade until a spade has been played on a trick of another suit, unless your hand holds nothing but spades. Once someone trumps in, spades are "broken" and anyone may lead them.
6. Score and pass the deal. After all 13 tricks, each team counts its tricks, scores against its contract, and the deal moves left. The first team to reach the target wins; if both cross it on the same hand, the higher score wins.

Beginner strategy that actually helps

• Count sure tricks, then add half-tricks cautiously. An ace is almost a trick. A king with no other cards in that suit is not, because the ace can drop on it. Bid what you would bet money on and let your partner cover the rest. Bags hurt slowly; a missed contract hurts at once.
• Long spades win late. Five or six spades, even small ones, often take tricks at the end once everyone else runs out. Count length as well as height.
• Short side suits are trumping chances. A singleton or void lets you trump early in that suit. South's single diamond in the sample round was worth a trick for exactly this reason.
• Don't overtake your partner. If your partner's card is already winning, play low. Spending your own winner on the same trick wastes it and can turn a made contract into bags.
• Protect a nil partner. When your partner bids nil, your job changes: play high on tricks they might otherwise win, and lead suits where they are likely to have low cards. Their 100 points usually matter more than your own bid.
• Watch the bag count late in a game. At 7 or 8 bags, a contract made exactly is worth more than one made with two spares. Sometimes the right play is to duck a trick you could win.
• Set the opponents when you can. If the other team bid high, every trick you steal from them costs them their whole contract, not just a point.

Common mistakes and rule disputes

• "You had a heart, you can't trump." Correct. Playing a spade while you still hold the suit led is a revoke. Follow suit first, every time.
• "Do I have to play higher?" No. You must follow suit if you can, but you may play any card of that suit, high or low. Bicycle and Pagat both say this.
• Leading spades too early. Spades cannot be led until broken, unless your hand is only spades. This is in both Bicycle and Pagat.
• Counting bags as 10 points each. A bag is worth 1 point. The pain arrives in a lump, as −100 at ten bags.
• Letting a failed nil's tricks fill the partner's bid. Under the usual rule they don't. Some tables allow it; agree before you play.
• Passing during bidding. Every player must bid a number. Bicycle sets the minimum at one in its individual game; partnership tables that allow nil let zero count as nil.
• Both teams over 500. The higher score wins. Bicycle adds that a tie is settled by playing one more hand.

Popular variants and house rules

These are house rules, not the standard game. Name them before the first deal.

• Blind nil: bid nil before looking at your cards. Pagat's description scores it at ±200, often lets the bidder swap two cards with partner, and usually only permits it when your team is at least 100 behind.
• Jokers and high twos: some groups add two jokers as the top trumps and remove the 2♣ and 2♥, sometimes making the 2♠ (or 2♦) a high trump as well. This changes which spades are safe.
• 10 for 200: a bid of ten tricks scores 200 if made, −200 if not.
• Minimum team bid of four, used in some partnership-bidding games.
• No bag penalty: overtricks simply count 1 each. Fine for casual games, but it removes most of the tension.
• Individual Spades: Bicycle's own scoring is for players on their own, where a missed contract scores zero rather than going negative.

Teaching it in 5 minutes

Here is a script the host can read aloud almost word for word:

1. "Your partner is across from you. We're a team for the whole game."
2. "Spades are always trump. Everything else is aces high."
3. "You must follow the suit that was led. If you can't, you can trump with a spade or throw anything away."
4. "Before we play, each of us says how many tricks we think we'll win. Partners add their numbers. That's your team's promise."
5. "Make the promise: ten points per trick you bid. Fall short: lose ten per trick you bid. Every extra trick is one point, but ten extras cost you a hundred, so aim for exact."
6. "You can't lead spades until someone has trumped with one."
7. "First team to 500 wins. Let's play one hand open-handed so you can see how it works."

Playing the first hand with cards face up takes ten extra minutes and saves an hour of confused bidding.

Ages and group size

Spades needs exactly four for the standard partnership game. Ten-year-olds who can follow suit and count to 13 pick it up quickly; the bidding is the part that takes a few hands to click. Pair a new player with an experienced partner rather than with another beginner. Pagat describes versions for two, three and six players, but those change the scoring and dealing enough that you should treat them as separate games. Bicycle lists its version as 13+, mainly because of the arithmetic and bidding judgment involved.

Frequently asked questions

Check yourself

Sources and edition notes

Four-player partnership Spades, no jokers. Bicycle documents the basic trick rules (spades always trump, no leading spades until broken, 10 points per trick bid, 1 per overtrick, optional 100-point bag penalty) and an individual-scoring version. The partnership contract, negative score for a missed bid, and nil scoring follow Pagat's description of the standard four-player game. House variants are labelled as such.

Sources checked October 2026. This records a document check, not a claim of hands-on testing.

• Bicycle: Spades, play and basic scoring
• Pagat: Spades, partnership rules, nil and variations

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