HOW TO DEAL Start with a fifty-two-card deck, and deal thirteen cards to each player. Card rankings are standard, with aces always high.There are strong hints of Bridge, Whist, and Hearts in the game of Spades. And yet, perhaps surprisingly, the game seems to have evolved on its own in the American South circa 1930. Over the years, Spades has come and gone, and come back again in terms of popularity. It’s possibly the easiest of all partner-based trump-taking games, largely because the trump suit is always spades.
HOW TO DEAL Start with a fifty-two-card deck, and deal thirteen cards to each player. Card rankings are standard, with aces always high.
SCORING The objective is to be the first team to score 500 points. Points are awarded for meeting or exceeding your team’s bid. Score ten times the bid value plus 1 point for each extra trick (known as overtricks). If you and your teammate, for example, bid a total of seven and ultimately capture eight tricks, you score 71 (the bid of 7 × 10, plus 1 for the overtrick). You should avoid taking too many overtricks—each time a side accumulates ten overtricks, 100 points are deducted from their score.
If you fail to meet your bid, you lose ten times the bid value. If you successfully bid nil, score your team 100 points. If you bid nil but fail, subtract 100 points from your team’s score. If you shoot the moon, your team scores 200 points (for making it) or -200 points (for failing).
HOW TO PLAY Spades are always trump. Each hand begins with a round of bidding, starting from the left of the dealer. You and your partner are bidding on how many total tricks you may win. This is not competitive bidding—you are not required to bid higher than the previous bid. Instead, each player bids once—and only once—and the bids are added together. For example: North opens with 3, East bids 1, South bids 4, West bids 3. The final bids are North-South for 7, East-West for 4.
A player may also bid nil, which means they cannot win a single trick. If your partner bids nil, you still must try to win the amount of your own bid. A team may also shoot the moon by bidding thirteen tricks.
The player to the left of the dealer leads the first card, which may be any suit except spades. All other players must follow suit if they can. Otherwise, they may play any card. Tricks are won by the highest spade or, if none, by the highest card in the leading suit. The trick winner leads the next trick.
Spades may not lead a trick until they are “broken”—that is, until a spade is played on another suit (because the player had no cards in the suit that was led), or because the trick leader has no other cards except spades in his hand. When all cards are played, scores are tallied and the deal rotates clockwise.
VARIATION 1: THREE-HAND SPADES
It is possible to satisfy a Spades craving with only three players. Each plays for herself and starts the game with seventeen cards (instead of thirteen). The extra card is set aside and does not count. The player holding 2 of clubs leads the first trick. All other rules are identical to the main game, except scoring for overtricks, which count against your bid. For example, if you bid six and win seven tricks, you subtract the overtrick from your initial bid (6−1) and then multiply by 10 (5 x 10) for a final score of 50.
Spades makes a good six-player game. You compete in three teams of two, and two fifty-two-card decks are used (104 cards total). All other rules are identical to the basic game, except that when two identical cards are played in the same trick, the second (more recent) card wins.