The Rules of Spades

Rules of Spades

Spades is a skill game that has a huge following of regular players. The rules of Spades are easy to learn, below we've listed them for your information. There are a number of variations of spades, all of which change the game in one way or another. However an understanding of the basic partnership game will provide the fundamentals of playing spades.

Played in pairs, partnership Spades uses one 52 card deck with no jokers, and the four player sit with pair members facing each other. Spades is always the highest scoring suit, and the cards are valued low to high 2-A.

• The cards are dealt, so each of the four players has 13 cards.

• Starting with the player left of the dealer, each participant bids the number of tricks he thinks he can win in the game. These bids must number between 4 and 13. If you don’t think you will win a trick at all you may bid nil or blind nil.

• Pay attention to every-one’s bids; spades tactics start here.

• Partners enter into a contract, meaning that their bids are added together and they become the teams bid for how many tricks the team can win. The number won by each of the players is less relevant than the team total.

• All bids should be written down.

• The player to the dealers left starts the game by placing down any card except for a spade.

• Always moving left the next player should follow suit; if you don’t have a card of the same suit you can lay down any card except for a spade unless one has appeared in another hand.

• A trick is won by the highest card of a common suit being played or a spade being played. In the event that multiple spades have been played, it is the highest one that takes the trick.

• The winner of the previous trick leads the following trick.

• The teams score is calculated at the end of each round and works in the following ways according to the number of tricks won in relation to the team’s bet:

Correct bet: 10 points for each trick.
Additional tricks: as for correct bet, plus 1 point for each additional trick.
More than 10 tricks over the bet: loose 100 points.
Fewer tricks than the bet: loose 10 points for each trick bet, irrelevant of how many won.

Correct nil bet: gain 100 points.
Incorrect nil bet: loose 100 points, gain one point per trick made.
Correct blind nil bet: gain 200 points.
Incorrect nil bet: loose 200 points, gain one point per trick made.

• The first team in the rules of Spades to reach the set point limit is the winner of the game.

Spades is one of the most popular skill games in the World and has a dedicated following of players. Multi-player games are more difficult to come by though and so we recommend Spadester to play in. Read the full Spadester review for full details of what they offer.

The easiest way to learn the rules of spades is simply to try playing the game online, you'll pick it up quickly and easily.