Short answers to the questions people ask most about spades and about playing it on Spades.net. The rules and the strategy tips have their own pages.
Spades is a trick-taking card game for four players in two partnerships, played with a standard 52-card deck. Every player gets thirteen cards, bids how many tricks they will win, and spades are always the trump suit. The first team to 500 points wins. It is one of the most popular card games in the United States and you can play it for free, right here on Spades.net.
Bid the number of tricks you expect to win, then play thirteen tricks following the suit of the first card whenever you can. A spade beats any other suit. Make your bid and you score ten points per trick; miss it and you lose them. The full rules, with pictures, are on the How to Play page.
Thirteen: the 2 through 10, jack, queen, king and ace of spades. A standard deck has 52 cards in four suits of thirteen. In the game of spades all thirteen of them are trumps, which is why holding a long spade suit is so valuable.
Thirteen each. The full deck of 52 cards is dealt out one at a time to the four players, so there are no cards left over and every card is in play.
None, in standard spades: you play with all 52 cards and no jokers. Some players use the “Joker Joker Deuce Deuce” variant, where the two jokers are added as the highest trumps and the two of hearts and two of clubs are removed to keep the deck at 52. Spades.net plays the standard game without jokers.
Yes, but it is a different game. In two-player spades the deck is not dealt; the players build their hands by drawing from the deck, keeping or discarding cards, until each has thirteen. There are no partners, so each player just makes their own bid. On Spades.net you always play the classic four-player version, with a computer partner and two computer opponents.
Four is the standard, in two teams of two. There are variations for two, three and six players; six-handed spades uses two decks with two of the twos removed, so that each player gets seventeen cards. Every rule and every bit of strategy you read about spades assumes four players, and that is the game played here.
Whoever sits after the dealer, going clockwise, bids first and plays the opening card. After that, whoever wins a trick leads the next one. The deal itself moves one seat to the left after every hand.
A trick is one round of four cards, one from each player. The top card in the opening suit takes it, unless someone played a spade; then the biggest spade wins. Whoever takes the trick starts the next one. There are thirteen tricks in a hand. Many players call tricks “books”: a bid of four books is a bid of four tricks.
Nil is a bid of zero: you set out to finish the hand without taking a single trick. If you succeed, your team gets 100 points on top of whatever your partner made. If you win even one trick, your team loses 100. It is the biggest single swing in the game, and the reason your partner will play high cards to keep tricks away from you.
Blind nil is a nil you call before you've even seen your hand. It is worth 200 points if it works and costs 200 if it fails. Most tables, including Spades.net, only allow it for a team that is 100 or more points behind, so it is a comeback tool rather than an everyday bid.
A bag is any trick your team takes beyond what it bid. Bid six, take eight and your bid is made with two tricks to spare: those are your bags, worth a point apiece for now. The catch is that bags pile up from hand to hand, and each time your team collects ten of them, 100 points come off your score. That is the bag penalty, also called the sandbag penalty, and it is what stops players from bidding low and taking everything.
A Boston is winning all thirteen tricks in one hand. Some house rules give a bonus for it, or even award the game. In the standard rules there is no special bonus: you simply score your bid plus bags. Bid thirteen and make it on Spades.net and your team scores 230 points: 130 for the bid, plus 100 for your partner, who has to bid nil when you bid thirteen and cannot have taken a trick. It is about as rare as it sounds.
Reneging means breaking the follow-suit rule: dropping a diamond on a heart lead while a heart is still sitting in your hand. At a real table it is a serious offence and usually costs the reneging team three tricks. On Spades.net it cannot happen. The game only lets you play legal cards, and if you tap one that is not, it tells you why.
Ten points for every trick bid when you make it, minus ten for every trick bid when you miss it. Each extra trick is one point and one bag, and ten bags cost 100 points. Nil is plus or minus 100, blind nil plus or minus 200. Add both teams up after every hand and play to 500. The How to Play page has a worked example, and in the game the score sheet shows every hand.
Count your sure tricks: aces, kings that are protected, the top spades and about half a trick for every extra spade beyond the third. Round down, and bid that. If the other bids on the table already add up to ten or more, bid a little lower. The strategy page goes through this hand by hand.
Bid accurately and make your bid, hand after hand. Big bids and nils win points fast but lose them just as fast; a team that quietly makes a six or seven every hand is at 500 before anybody else. Beyond that: cover your partner's nil, set the opponents when they overbid, and stop taking tricks once your bid is in so you don't collect bags.
Yes, that is the “Joker Joker Deuce Deuce” variant: the big joker is the highest trump, then the little joker, then the two of diamonds and the two of spades, ahead of the ace of spades. The twos of hearts and clubs are removed. It is very popular in some communities, but it is not the standard game. Spades.net currently plays the classic rules without jokers.
Yes. There is nothing to buy, nothing to download and no account to make. Open the page and play.
Against the computer. Your partner and your two opponents are computer players, and you choose how strong they are: from Casual, who plays sensibly, to Master, who plays out over a hundred possible deals before each card. They never see your hand, only their own cards and what has been played, so nobody at the table is cheating.
Because it is not a legal play right now. Either you still hold a card in the suit that started the trick, so you have to play one of those, or you are trying to open with a spade before spades have been broken. Cards you can't play are shown darker, and tapping one shows the reason. This is also the most common “bug” people used to report about the old version of this site, so we made sure the game explains itself.
Yes. The game fills whatever screen you have (phone, tablet or computer) and rearranges the table when you turn your device. On a phone your cards sit in two rows so they stay big enough to read. If you want them bigger still, switch on the large-print deck in the settings.
Yes, in your own browser. Close the page in the middle of a hand and it is exactly where you left it when you come back. Your name, your picture, your settings and your statistics are saved the same way. None of it is sent to us. The only thing that ever reaches our server is a short technical report if the game crashes, without your name or anything else about you.
Yes. Open the menu in the game and choose Settings. You can play to 200, 300 or 500, switch nil and blind nil on or off, turn the bag penalty off, allow spades to be led at any time, require a minimum team bid of four and more. Rule changes take effect in the next game.
Use the contact form and mention the version number you see in the bottom left corner of the game. That number tells us exactly which version you were playing.