Play Spades Online Free · Multiplayer Spades · Est. Cincinnati, 1937
Spades was invented in Cincinnati, Ohio in the late 1930s, the youngest child of the Whist family, built for players who wanted a faster, sharper contest. It asked for nothing but a fifty-two card deck and four chairs, and in the years of the Depression that was a price anyone could pay.
Then came the war, and the war made the game. Spades deals fast, interrupts clean, and resumes without complaint, which suited soldiers who might be called away mid-hand. It crossed both oceans in barracks bags and came home with the GIs who had taught it to each other on troop ships.
After the war the game found its permanent homes. It settled onto college campuses with the GI Bill. It became a treasured tradition in African American households, taught across kitchen tables and defended with house rules handed down like heirlooms. It filled the long hours of barracks and prison dayrooms, where a deck of cards is freedom you can hold.
Ask four players the right way to play spades and you will get five answers. Partners or cutthroat. Nil bids and Blind Nil. Jokers in the deck or out of it. Sandbag penalties and ten for two hundred. The game has never had one rulebook, and that is precisely why it has never gone out of style. Spadesinator enforces whichever rules your table swears by.
Sign in with Google, one click, no passwords. Create a room or join one, and fill the empty chairs with friends, with AI players, or both. Thirteen tricks a round; first team to the target takes the night. New to the game? How to Play Spades, the complete primer, teaches it in one read.