From the First Deal to the Final Score · A Complete Beginner's Guide
Spades is a trick-taking card game for four players in two partnerships, in which spades are always trump. Some tables play a standard fifty-two card deck with the ace of spades on top, and many others rank jokers and deuces above the ace. This page teaches the whole game in order on the standard deck.
Read it once and you're ready to play.
Prefer to watch? It runs five minutes.
“How to Play Spades (Quick Guide)” by Callum's Cards. Not a Spadesinator production. The player loads only when you press play, and no cookies are set until then.
Four players sit in two teams of two, partners across from each other. Each hand, every player gets thirteen cards and bids how many tricks they'll win. Then the table plays all thirteen tricks. Your team scores points for making its combined bid and loses points for missing it. The first team to reach the target score wins. That's traditionally 500 for a long game or 300 for a single evening.
Spades are always trump. Any spade beats any card of any other suit. Unlike bridge or euchre, nobody chooses trump.
The dealer shuffles and deals the whole deck one card at a time, clockwise, starting with the player on their left. Everyone gets thirteen cards. The deal moves one seat to the left after every hand.
Cards rank from ace (high) down to two. Some tables add jokers above the ace of spades. That's a house variant, covered in the Rules Ledger. This primer teaches the standard deck.
Starting left of the dealer and going clockwise, each player looks at their hand and bids how many of the thirteen tricks they expect to win. Everyone bids once, and nobody passes. Your bid and your partner's add up to one team contract. If you bid 3 and your partner bids 4, your team needs at least seven tricks.
Most players count a hand like this:
A bid of zero is called nil. You're promising to win no tricks this hand. Make it and your team gets a bonus, usually 100 points. Win even one trick and you lose that much instead. Your partner still has to make their own bid while covering you. A good nil hand is full of low cards, and a good partner plays high over your cards.
Some tables also allow blind nil, bid before you look at your cards, for double the stakes. Most tables allow it only for a team that's far behind.
Some tables take the guesswork out of the bid. In Mirror, you bid the number of spades you hold, and no spades means nil. In Whiz, you bid your spades or nil, nothing else. In Suicide, one partner on each team bids nil every hand, and the first of the two to bid decides which. Spadesinator deals all three under New Game, then Variations, with Mirror and Whiz on the Standard 52 deck. The Rules Ledger has the details.
The player on the dealer's left leads the first trick with any card except a spade. Play moves clockwise, and each player must play a card of the suit that was led if they have one. That's called following suit. Breaking the rule is a renege, and at a serious table it costs the offending team three tricks.
If you have no card of the led suit, you can play any card. A spade trumps the trick, and the highest spade played wins it. If no spade is played, the highest card of the led suit wins. The winner of each trick takes the cards and leads the next trick.
You can't lead a spade until spades are broken. That happens the first time someone plays a spade on a trick because they couldn't follow suit. Until then, every lead must come from another suit. One exception: a player holding nothing but spades may lead one.
Make your team's combined bid and you score ten points for every trick bid. Bid seven, take seven, score seventy. Fall short and you're set, and the same seventy comes off your score instead. Each trick you win beyond your bid scores one point and is called a bag.
When a team collects its tenth bag, it loses 100 points, and ten bags come off its count. This sandbag rule stops teams from bidding low on purpose to collect cheap tricks.
A made nil adds its bonus on top of whatever the partner's bid earned. A failed nil subtracts it. Tables differ on whether a failed nil bidder's tricks count toward the partner's bid or as bags. Spadesinator lets the table decide.
Hands are played until a team reaches the target score. The old rule cards printed 500. Spadesinator defaults to 300, which fits a single evening. If both teams pass the target on the same hand, the higher total wins. Some tables end the game on the spot when a team wins all thirteen tricks in one hand. That's called a Boston, and Spadesinator honors it.
The vocabulary that gets you through your first night.
Trick · One round of four cards, one from each player. Thirteen per hand. At many tables, especially Black American tables where much of the game's living tradition was built, a trick is called a book.
Trump · The suit that beats all others. In spades, always spades.
Following suit · Playing a card of the suit that was led. Mandatory when you can.
Renege · Failing to follow suit when you could have. Edmond Hoyle was already ruling on it in 1742. Spadesinator won't let you renege unless the table plays the renege rule, and then a player has to call it.
Breaking spades · The first time a spade is played on a non-spade lead. Before that, spades can't be led.
Cutting · Trumping a trick with a spade because you couldn't follow suit.
Nil · A bid of zero tricks. Make it for a bonus, miss it for a penalty. Blind nil is a nil bid before you look at your cards, for double the stakes.
Set · Missing your team's bid. The points you would have won come off your score instead.
Bag · A trick won beyond your bid, worth one point. Every ten cost 100. Also called a sandbag.
Board · A house minimum for the team bid, commonly four.
Boston · Winning all thirteen tricks in one hand.
Cutthroat · Spades without partners, every player for themselves. This primer teaches the partnership game.
Instincts come from playing a lot of hands.
Good spades players got that way by playing a lot of hands. That's how you learn when to lead trump, when your partner's four is really a three, and what a nil hand looks like before you count it. The hard part for most new players is finding three other people who are free tonight and patient enough to teach.
Spadesinator fixes that. Sit down alone and AI players fill the empty chairs right away, so a hand is always available. The built-in engine is free and plays every rule on this page. Play twenty hands in a week and you'll start counting without thinking about it.
A live table is a hard place to learn. Renege once or bag your partner twice and you'll hear about it. That's fine among old friends and miserable on your first night.
At an AI table, misplay a hand and the next one deals. The AI players talk during a game, but you can turn AI Banter off in the game settings for a quiet table. Turn it back on when you want the company.
When the regular AI stops challenging you, seat an Expert shark in any chair, one at a time or all three at once. You can also change the house rules. Add jokers, switch on sandbag penalties, or raise the target score.
Play spades online free against AI opponents that play to win, or deal in your friends with a room code. No download, and your first hand deals in under a minute.
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