Every Way People Play · And Which Ones Spadesinator Deals
Every table plays Spades a little differently. Here are the rules people actually play, from the standard game to the named variations.
28 rules
Also called Ten for two hundred
A team that bids ten or more of the thirteen tricks plays for a flat 200, win or lose. The most widely played bonus bid in spades.
Documented at real tables for decades and carried into nearly every spades app since. Nobody knows who first priced ten tricks at exactly 200.
Each bag also scores a point, so a team that bids 4 and takes 6 scores 42 and picks up 2 bags. Printed rules usually score it this way.
Spadesinator leaves bags off the score by default, so the same hand reads 40 with 2 bags. A table can turn this on.
A nil bid made before you look at your cards. Most tables only allow it to a team that's well behind, and Spadesinator's default is trailing by 200 or more.
Some tables add a card exchange: the blind nil bidder passes cards to their partner and gets the same number back. Spadesinator passes two by default, and a table can pick one to four.
Blind bets are an old gambling habit, and poker has used them for two centuries. Spades applied the idea to nil. The deficit rule is the traditional limit that keeps it a comeback play.
Also called Minimum bid
A team's two bids must add up to at least the board. A team that bids less is scored as if it had bid the board.
The word comes from Bid Whist, where four is the lowest bid. Nobody wrote down how it crossed into spades.
Every bid of one becomes its own contract. Take exactly one trick for the bonus. Take none and you pay. Take more and you score nothing, and the extras are bags.
Another house special. In standard scoring a bid of one barely counts. This rule makes it worth playing for.
Take every trick in a single hand and your team wins on the spot, whatever the score.
The name comes from Bid Whist, where taking every book has long been called a Boston. Before that came Boston itself, a whist-family game of the 1770s named while the siege of that city was in the news, in which the top contract was to take everything.
Nobody can lead a spade until a spade has been played on another suit's trick, which breaks spades. A player holding nothing but spades may lead one anyway.
Some tables drop the rule and let anyone lead spades at any time. On Spadesinator it's on by default, and a table can turn it off.
Everyone plays for themselves. Each player bids, takes tricks and scores alone, and the other rules stay the same.
Also called Blind bid
Bid big before you look at your cards. Make it and every trick you bid pays a premium. Miss it and every trick you bid costs you. Rates vary from house to house.
Bid Whist tables have paid premiums for blind bids for generations, and this is the spades version.
The 2 of hearts and 2 of clubs come out, and the top three trumps become the Big Joker, the Little Joker, then the 2 of spades, all ranking above the ace.
The joker is an American invention of the 1860s, added to the deck so euchre players could have a top trump called the Best Bower. Spades players who rank the jokers over the ace are using the card for its original job. Joker variants have been a fixture of African American spades tables for generations.
Same as Joker, Joker, Deuce, but the 2 of diamonds is also a trump, ranking between the Little Joker and the 2 of spades. Sixteen trumps in all, and the 2 of diamonds no longer counts as a diamond.
The deuces-high family grew up alongside the joker decks at the same tables, promoting the lowest card in the deck to the top of the trump suit.
Each player bids the number of spades they hold, and there is no choice. No spades means Nil. Spadesinator deals it with the Standard 52 deck, since a joker deck deals more spades than a hand has tricks.
Bid to take no tricks. Make it and your team gets 100. Take even one trick and your team loses 100.
Tables differ on the partner. Some require the nil bidder's partner to make their own bid, and some let a failed nil's tricks count toward the partner's total. Spadesinator lets a table pick both.
The zero bid is older than spades. Whist and early bridge players bid nullo, a promise to lose, a century ago. Spades made going nil a household phrase.
Also called Tournament bidding
Partners bid without discussing their hands first, as in sanctioned tournament play. Casual tables let partners talk it over before they bid.
Arguments over table talk are older than spades. Whist and bridge players spent the nineteenth century writing stricter rules against signalling your partner, and kitchen tables have ignored them ever since.
The first hand is played without bids, for ten points a trick. Bidding starts in round two.
A mercy rule for mixed tables that lets new players see a hand before they have to bid. No book records it.
Also called Revoking
A player reneges by playing off suit while holding a card of the suit led. At a real table nothing stops you, so the other side has to catch it and call it. The usual penalty is three tricks to the other team. Some tables charge points, void the hand, or credit the other team with their bid.
Spadesinator can stop every renege before it happens, or let players renege and catch each other, with the table’s choice of penalty.
Older than spades. Edmond Hoyle’s whist treatise of 1742, the book that made "according to Hoyle" a phrase, already ruled on the revoke and what it cost.
After a set number of hands the game ends and the team ahead wins, even if nobody has reached the target score. It keeps a game to a known length.
Also called Bags
Every trick a team takes over its bid is a bag, and every tenth bag costs the team 100 points. Bags keep teams from bidding low and coasting.
Some tables use a smaller limit or a different fine. Spadesinator lets a table set both.
A sandbagger, in the American slang of the 1880s, was a bruiser who hid his weapon and played weak until it paid to stop. Card players borrowed the word for underbidding, and spades put the fine on the score sheet.
Also called Getting set
Miss your bid and you're set. The common penalty is ten points for every trick bid. Some tables charge a flat fine instead, or the harsher double-deficit style that charges by how far short you fell. Spadesinator offers all three.
The set arrived with the game itself. A bid that costs nothing to miss isn't a bid. The variants are regional.
A one-player blind bid that pays only for an exact count. Take exactly your bid for the premium. Take fewer and you pay. Take more and you score nothing, and the extras are bags.
A house special. You won't find this one in Hoyle. It rewards exact bidding, which is a different skill from taking tricks.
Also called The plain deck
The deck the game was invented with. Every suit ranks ace high, and spades are always trump, so the ace of spades is the best card in the deck.
Spades itself dates to Cincinnati, Ohio in the late 1930s, the youngest child of the Whist family. It spread through the barracks and troop ships of the Second World War, because it deals fast, interrupts clean, and resumes without complaint.
Also called Suicide spades
One partner on each team bids Nil every hand, and the first of the two to bid decides which. Bid Nil yourself, or bid a number and your partner is on Nil. Every hand is a nil hand, so it rewards good nil play and good covering.
The first team to reach the target at the end of a hand wins. If both teams pass it on the same hand, the higher score wins. The traditional game is 500, and shorter targets like 300 fit one sitting.
Five hundred is the number the old rule cards printed, inherited from the whist family's long games. Shorter targets suit a modern evening.
Each player bids the number of spades they hold or Nil, and nothing else. No spades means Nil, and the skill is all in the play. Spadesinator deals it with the Standard 52 deck.
Both partners bid nil on the same hand, seen or blind, and the whole team promises to take no tricks. Spadesinator only allows it to a team trailing by the table’s deficit.
It comes from the same urge to raise the stakes that gave whist its redouble. If anyone played it before the internet era, nobody wrote it down.
Three players each play for themselves. One card comes out of the deck so it deals evenly at 17 each, and each player bids and scores alone.
Two players build their hands from the stock instead of a deal. On your turn, look at the top card. Keep it and throw away the next card, or throw it away and keep the next. Take turns until each player holds 13 cards, then bid and play as usual.
Some tables let a player who is dealt no spades show the hand and call for a new deal.