Seasons, Standings, and the Trophy at the End
A league is a private standings board for your regular table. One of you starts it, the rest join with a six-character code, and every game you play for it counts toward the season. When the season ends, the top three take home a medal.
Nobody has to use one. Spades plays exactly the same without a league, and most nights nobody thinks about it. But if your table has a running argument about who is actually best, a league settles it, and it takes about a minute to set up.
Leagues are free and optional.
Four steps, start to trophy. The first two take a minute.
One person runs it. Everyone plays in it.
You need to be signed in. The Leagues button in the header opens your leagues, and Create a league walks you through it in two steps: the league itself, then the rules for its first season.
A player can belong to up to twenty leagues, so a Thursday table and a family reunion table can each keep their own board.
Give the league a name, up to thirty characters. Then decide whether Expert AI may fill empty seats.
With AI fill off, only tables of four humans count toward the standings. A league game with an AI in a chair still plays in full, it just does not reach the board. This is the default, because an all-human table is the only thing that measures the members against each other.
With AI fill on, the expert AI can take an empty chair and the game still counts. Better for a league that struggles to seat four on the same night.
Every season has its own rules, set on the same form a table uses: the deck, the target score, Nil and its variants, Board, sandbags, reneging, and every point value. The season also fixes the bidding style, tournament or casual, so every table that plays for it bids the same way.
Once the season starts, its rules are locked. That is the point: nobody can change the rules mid-season to pad a record. To play different rules, start a new season.
A season starts today or on a day you pick, and ends on a date you set or runs until you start the next one. An open-ended season is fine for a table that just wants a running board.
Minimum games is optional. Leave it blank and the board ranks by wins. Set a number and the board ranks by win rate, with every member rated out of at least that many games until they have played them. At a minimum of ten, a four-and-one start counts as forty percent, so the way up the board is to keep playing.
When the league is created you get a six-character invite code, shown on the league page with a copy button. Read it out, text it, post it in the group chat. It never uses the letters I or O or the digits 0 or 1, so it survives being read aloud.
No approval queue. The code is the door.
Sign in, open Leagues, choose Join with a code, and type the six characters. You are in, and the league appears in your list with its standings.
Anyone holding the code can join while the league is open. There is no approval step, so hand the code to the people you want at the table.
Any member can leave from the league page. Leaving drops you off the standings, and you need the code again to come back. Any medal you already won stays on your Account page.
One dropdown on New Game. The rest is spades.
Set up a game as usual. On the Game Rules tab, the Play for a league dropdown lists every league you belong to. Pick one and the season's rules and point values take over from the form; the bidding style comes with them. Your own preferences, like timers, chat, and whether you say tricks or books, stay yours.
Then fill the table the way you always do: invite friends from the lobby, or let the AI take a chair if the league allows it.
Every current member at the table gets the result on their line: a win or a loss, points for and against, bags, sets, and nils. Someone at the table who is not a member plays the whole game and simply does not appear on the board.
At a league table, the crown on the felt goes to the seated member who is on top of the season's standings, so you can see who you are chasing before the first card.
A league game counts on the site-wide Overall leaderboard as well when its season plays standard scoring: a target of 300 or 500, the standard point values, tournament bidding, and none of 10 for 200, Boston, Double Nil, Double Blind Nil or reneging.
The choices that do not move a point total are free, and a season can make them and still rank. The deck is one of them, so a season played on a joker deck counts the same as one on the standard 52. So are Nil, Blind Nil, Board, Going Blind, Solo Blind and Boosted 1, at the standard values.
Either way, the league standings are the same. A season with house rules of its own simply feeds its own board and leaves the Overall leaderboard alone.
Visible to every member, all season long.
Without a minimum games count, the board ranks by wins, then win percentage, then points scored. A club league should reward showing up, so a member who plays every week and wins often sits above one who came once and won.
With a minimum games count, the board ranks by rate, with everyone rated out of at least the minimum until they reach it. A row still short of the minimum shows how far along it is, like 4 of 10. Your wins, losses and win percentage are always your honest record; only the ranking uses the minimum.
The league page shows the current season's standings with each member's wins, losses and win percentage, the season's rules, and the most recent games played for it. When a league has played more than one season, tabs above the standings open the earlier boards, so last season's record is never lost.
A season owns its rules. A new season is how the rules change.
The owner starts a new season from the league page. Starting it now ends the current one on the spot. Scheduling it for a later date leaves the current season running until then. Only one season can be scheduled ahead, and a scheduled season can be cancelled before it starts.
The new season opens on the previous season's rules and minimum, ready to change or keep. Its standings start fresh, and the old board stays readable under its own tab.
A season closes when its end date passes or the next season starts. A game dealt before the close still scores into it when it finishes, so nobody loses a result to the clock. Between seasons, no new league games can be started until the owner opens the next one.
The top three take something home.
A couple of hours after a season closes, the top three members who played at least one game receive gold, silver and bronze. Each award sits on the Awards shelf of the winner's Account page with the league's name, the season, and their record. Nothing takes it back: not leaving the league, not the league being deleted.
By default a season plays for the stock medal. The owner can design a trophy of their own instead, in the trophy studio on the league page, and the top three receive that trophy in gold, silver and bronze. Designing one uses a generation credit, the same kind that paints card backs and emblems, from the free trial or a Spadesinator Plus membership.
A trophy is attached to the season coming up, or the one running, and has to be set before that season closes.
The owner can also give the league a crest, generated the same way, which sits at the top of the league page. Purely for pride.
What the owner can do from Manage league.
Changing a season's rules is not on the list, on purpose. Rules change by starting a new season, never by editing the one in play.
Sign in, open Leagues, and hand your regulars a code. About a minute's work, and then the standings settle the argument for you.
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