Spades is a trick-taking card game devised in the United States in the 1930s. It can be played as either a partnership or solo/"cutthroat" game. The object is to take the number of tricks that were bid before play of the hand began. Spades is a descendant of the whist family of card games, which also includes bridge, hearts, and oh hell. Its major difference as compared to other whist variants is that, instead of trump being decided by the highest bidder or at random, the spade suit always trumps, hence the name.

History

Spades was devised in the Midwest of the United States in the late 1930s. Bridge author, George Coffin ascertained that it originated in Cincinnati between 1937 and 1939. The game is descended from Whist and is closely related to Bridge, Pinochle and Euchre. It appears like a simplification of contract bridge such that a skilled spades player can learn bridge relatively quickly, the major additional rules being dynamic trump, the auction, dummy play, and rubber scoring. The game's rise to popularity in the U.S. came during World War II, when it was spread by soldiers traveling around the globe. The game's popularity in the armed forces stems from its simplicity compared to Bridge and Euchre and the fact that it can be more easily interrupted than Poker, all of which were also popular military card games. After the war, veterans brought the game back home to the U.S., where due to the GI Bill it spread to, and became popular among, college students as well as in-home games. It also remained widely popular in countries in which U.S. troops were stationed, both in WWII and later deployments.

Overview

Rules

The deal

The first dealer is chosen by a draw for "first spade" or "highest card". Thereafter the deal passes to the dealer's left after each hand. The dealer shuffles, and the player to the right is given the opportunity to "cut" the cards to prevent the dealer stacking the deck. The entire deck is then dealt face-down one card at a time in clockwise order. With four players, each player should receive 13 cards. The players then pick up their cards, verify the correct count of the cards, and arrange them as desired. The most common arrangement is by suit, then rank. A misdeal is a deal in which all players have not received the same number of cards, or a player has dealt out of turn. A misdeal may be discovered immediately by counting the cards after they are dealt, or it may be discovered during play of a hand. If a single card is misdealt and discovered before players in question have seen their cards, the player that is short a card can pull a card at random from the player with an extra card. Otherwise a hand is misdealt. The hand is considered void and the hand must be redealt by the same dealer, unless the reason for the redeal is the hand was dealt out of turn.

Bidding

Each player bids the number of tricks they expect to take. The player to the left of the dealer starts the bidding. Bidding continues in a clockwise direction, ending with the dealer. As spades are always trump, no trump suit is named during bidding as with some other variants. A bid of "zero" is called "nil". Players must bid at least one if they don't want to bid "nil" (see below). In partnership spades, the standard rule is that the bids by the two members of each partnership are added together.

Blind and nil bidding

Two very common variants of bidding are for a player or partnership to bid "blind", without having looked at their cards, or to bid "nil", stating that they will not take a single trick during play of the hand. These bids give the partnership a bonus if the players exactly meet their bid, but penalizes them if the players takes more or fewer. A combined bid of two "blind nil" is usually allowed and is worth both the blind and nil bonuses or penalties. In some variants, the player bidding nil passes one or two of their cards (depending on the variant rules) to their partner and receives an equal number of cards back from said partner. Nil passing may be allowed only in the case of a blind nil. Usually teams must be down by 100 points to bid blind nil.

Game play

Each hand consists of a number of tricks. A four-handed game consists of thirteen tricks using all fifty-two cards. The player on the dealer's left makes the opening lead by playing a single card of their choice. Players in clockwise fashion then play cards of their choice. They must follow suit if possible. Otherwise they may play any card, including a trump spade. Once a card has left the hand of a player, it stands and cannot be retrieved, unless the player who threw the card makes an effort to correct their mistake before the next player lays down a card. Nil rules: One nil per game. A common variant rule, borrowed from Hearts, is that a player may not lead spades until a spade has been played to trump another trick. This prevents a player who is "long" in spades (having a large number of them) from leading spades one after the other at the beginning of the hand to deplete them and thus prevent other players using them as trumps. The act of playing the first spade in a hand is known as "breaking spades", derived from its parent rule, "breaking hearts". When a player leads with a spade after spades has been broken, the other players must follow suit. Another common variant rule, also borrowed from Hearts, is that a player cannot lead spades in the first trick. The trick is won or taken by the player who played the highest card of the led suit. If trumps were played, the highest trump card wins. The player who wins the trick gathers the cards up into a facedown arrangement that allows players to count the number of tricks taken. The contents of each trick can not be viewed after this point, except to determine whether a player reneged. The number of tricks a player has won cannot be disguised. If asked, each player must count out their tricks until everyone has agreed on the "trick count". The player who wins any given trick, leads the next. Play continues until all players have exhausted their hands, which should occur on the same last trick. Otherwise, it is declared a misdeal.

Reneging

A partnership reneges on their contract if they violate the rules of play. Most often this happens when a player plays offsuit when they could have—and therefore should have—followed suit. This may not be noticed until later in the game. Common penalties for reneging are for the reneging player to automatically lose their bid, or for the reneger to have three tricks added to their bid as a penalty, meaning that the team may still make contract but must take three additional tricks to do so. It does not matter whether the player reneged on purpose.

Scoring

Once the final trick is played, the hand is then scored. Many variants for scoring exist. What follows is the basic method. All players must align tricks earned from time played consecutively to last hand

Contract score

Once a hand is completed, the players count the number of tricks they took and, in the case of partnerships or teams, the members' trick counts are summed to form a team count. Each player's or team's trick count is then compared to their contract. If the player or team made at least the number of tricks bid, 10 points for each bid trick are awarded. A bid of 5 would earn 50 points if made. If a team did not make its contract, it was "set" and 10 points for each bid trick are deducted from the team's score. E.g.: six bid and any number less than six taken, results in minus 60 points. If a player/team took more tricks than they bid, a single point is scored for each overtrick, called an "overtrick", "bag", or "sandbag". A bid of 5 tricks with 6 tricks taken, results in a score of 51 points.

Bonuses or penalties

To this contract score, players add bonuses earned and subtract penalties assessed based on whether the player successfully did or failed to do any of the more specific things they said they would in the bidding phase. Many variants exist that award or penalize according to certain behaviors. They are covered below. For the basic nil and blind bids, points are awarded as follows: Though some variant bonuses or penalties are based on the contract score, normally a bonus or penalty does not affect and is not affected by any other bonus or penalty, or the contract score. As a result, a partnership can have a net positive score even if they failed to make their contract. For instance, if one player successfully made a nil bid, but their partner bid 5 tricks and only took 4 tricks, the partnership still gets the bonus which is represented as −50 points + 100 points = 50 points. Conversely, a partnership can have a net negative score in much the same way. If a player failed a nil bid but the partnership bid and took 5 tricks, the net score is −50 points. If a nil bid is set, most tournament rules dictate that the overtricks make the nil invalid.

Sandbags and bagging out

A common scoring variant is designed to penalize players for underestimating the number of tricks they will take, while at the same time not removing the possible strategy of intentionally taking overtricks, or "bags", in order to "set" the other team. This is accomplished by keeping track of bags in the ones place on the scorecard, and assessing a 100-point penalty when 10 bags are accumulated and the ones place rolls over. In shorter variants of the game, where players play to 250 points, instead of the standard 500 points, sandbag penalties can be assessed earlier. In these variants, a 50-point penalty would be assessed when 5 bags are accumulated. For example, if a team's bid is 5 tricks and they take 8 tricks, the score for the hand is 53 points. If the team's total score before this hand had a digit in the ones place of 7 or more, for instance 108, the team has "bagged out" or been "sandbagged". The hand's score is added to the total and then 100 points are deducted. In the example, the score would be 61 points after the penalty. The 10 bags could be considered to make the penalty 90 points. The penalty can instead be 110 points to offset this, or the ones' place can simply not be carried when adding. Anything over 10 sandbags is retained in the first digit and count towards future overtricks. A player or team can bag out multiple times in a game. Sandbags do not count as points.

Keeping score

One of the players is the scorer and writes the bids down, so that during the play and for the scoring afterward, this information will be available to all the players. When a hand is over, the scores should be recorded next to the bids. Alternatively, the scorer can turn the bid into the contract score by writing in the number of bags (zero if there were none) behind the bid, and a minus sign before it if the team was set, then add bonuses and subtract penalties beneath. A running score should be kept so that players can readily see each other's total points.

Winning

The most common condition is the first to reach 500 points, or forcing the opposing team to drop to −200 points. Alternatively, the game could be played for a fixed number of hands or a fixed time limit. With four players, eight hands can generally be played in about an hour. If there is a tie, then all players participate in one more round of play until a winner is decided.

Game variations

As with any widely played game of such a flexible nature, spades has many variations, ranging from significant changes in play to small tweaks that suit individual or household preference.

Deal variations

Bidding variations

Trump variations

Variations

Scoring variations

The number of players

Traditionally spades is played with four players in two partnerships. However, there are variations that allow for greater or fewer players. Partnerships are optional even with four players. All other rules should be agreed upon beforehand by the players.

Partners versus cutthroat/solo

The differences partners spades and cutthroat bidding and play are substantial. In partners, a player would bid a trick for every ace, king, and queen in a side suit (i.e.: non-Spade). In cutthroat, a player would rarely bid on a king in a long side suit (5+ cards) nor a queen in any length side suit because of the risk of their being trumped. This risk is reduced in partners by the possibility that partner may be out of the long suit and able to discard or to overtrump an opponent. In partners, nil bids are easier to make because the nil bidder's partner can overtake or trump the nil bidder's high cards. In cutthroat, this safety valve is not available. Partners allows a mix of weak and strong players by pairing a weak player with a strong one, resulting in a more satisfying game (provided that the division of talent is about even) than in Cutthroat where individual weak players would stand little or no chance against strong players. Conversely, against a computer program where the object is for a human to beat the computer software, being saddled with a weak computer partner does not provide a satisfying game. Thus, Cutthroat makes more sense for a computer game than Partners.

Terminology