How to Play Spades: A Beginner's Guide

Spades is a trick-taking card game for four players in two teams. You bid how many tricks you'll win, then try to win exactly that many: not fewer, and ideally not a lot more. Spades are always trump, so the smallest spade beats the biggest heart.

That's the whole idea. This guide walks you through a hand step by step, then plays one out trick by trick. For the complete reference, with every scoring rule and variant, see the spades rules.

What you need

• Four players. Two teams of two. If you're short, the online game fills the empty seats with bots.
• One deck. A standard 52-card deck works. Many tables, including ours, play with jokers and deuces: take out the 2♥ and 2♣, put in both jokers. The deck is still 52 cards.
• Something to keep score. Pencil and paper, or let the game do it.
• About 15 minutes for a quick game of four hands, or an evening if you play to 500.

Step 1: Sit with your partner

Partners sit across from each other. Going around the table clockwise it's you, an opponent, your partner, the other opponent. That way every trick has two cards from each team.

You and your partner win and lose together. You can't show each other your cards or talk about them, but you'll learn to read a lot from what your partner bids and plays.

Step 2: Deal 13 cards each

The dealer deals the whole deck, one card at a time, clockwise. Everyone gets 13. The deal moves one seat to the left each hand.

Sort your hand by suit. Spades are the suit to look at first, because they are trump: any spade beats any card of the other three suits.

If you play with jokers and deuces, the top of the trump ladder looks like this:

Big Joker > Little Joker > 2♦ > 2♠ > A♠ > K♠ > Q♠ … > 3♠

The jokers and the 2♦ (two of diamonds) count as spades. Keep them with your spades when you sort. With a standard deck, the A♠ is simply the highest card. The spades card order guide has pictures of both.

Step 3: Bid your books

In spades, a trick is called a book. Each player bids how many books they expect to win this hand, from 1 to 13. Or you can bid nil, which is a promise to win none at all.

You and your partner add your bids together. That's your team contract. If you bid 3 and your partner bids 4, your team needs 7 books between you. It doesn't matter who wins them.

A beginner's way to count:

• Each ace of a side suit (hearts, diamonds, clubs): 1 book.
• Each king with at least one other card in its suit: about half a book to one book.
• Top trumps (jokers, 2♦, 2♠, A♠): 1 book each.
• Four or more spades: count 1 extra book for every spade past the third.

Add them up and round down if you're unsure. At Spades Night everyone bids at the same time, in secret, and the bids flip over together. At a kitchen table you usually bid in turn starting from the dealer's left.

The how to bid in spades guide goes deeper, with six example hands.

Step 4: Play the tricks

The player on the dealer's left leads the first card. Everyone else plays one card in turn, clockwise. The four cards together are a trick, and the best card wins it.

Three rules cover almost everything:

1. Follow suit if you can. If a heart is led and you have a heart, you must play a heart. Any heart you like.
2. If you can't follow suit, play anything. You can cut with a spade to win the trick, or throw away a card you don't need.
3. Highest trump wins; otherwise the highest card of the suit that was led wins. A card of a different side suit never wins, however high.

The winner of each trick leads the next one.

Breaking spades

There's one more rule about leading. You can't lead a spade until spades are "broken", which means someone has played a spade on an earlier trick because they couldn't follow suit. The jokers and 2♦ count as spades here too. The only exception: if all you have left are spades, you may lead one. So the very first trick of every hand is always led with a heart, diamond or club. More on breaking spades.

Step 5: Score the hand

After all 13 tricks, each team counts its books.

• Made it? 10 points for each book in your contract, plus 1 point for each extra book. Bid 7, take 8: 71 points.
• Missed it? You're set: lose 10 points for each book in your contract. Bid 7, take 6: minus 70.
• Extra books are bags. That extra book in the first example is a bag. Bags add up from hand to hand, and every 10 bags costs your team 100 points. That's why you don't just grab every trick you can. See bags.
• Nil is scored on its own: +100 if the nil bidder took no books, −100 if they took any.

The classic game goes to 500 points. At Spades Night the default is a quick match: four hands, highest score wins. The spades scoring guide has worked examples of every case.

A sample hand, trick by trick

Let's play the start of a hand. North and South are partners against East and West. West dealt, so North leads first. We'll use jokers and deuces.

North's hand: A♥ K♥ 7♥ 4♥ · Q♦ 9♦ 5♦ · A♣ 10♣ 6♣ · K♠ 8♠ 3♠

North counts: A♥ is a sure book, A♣ is a sure book, K♥ sitting with the ace is probably a book too. The K♠ might win with a bit of luck, but three spades is short. North bids 3.

South bids 4, so North–South have a contract of 7. East bids 3 and West bids 2, a contract of 5. Board is met for both teams. (Board means a team contract under 4 is raised to 4; see board.)

Trick 1. North leads the A♥. East plays 9♥, South plays 5♥ (their only heart), West plays J♥. The ace wins. North has one book.

Trick 2. North leads K♥. East plays 10♥. South has no hearts left and cuts with the 4♠. That breaks spades. West plays Q♥. South's little spade wins the trick, because any trump beats any heart.

South just trumped their own partner's winner. With the A♥ gone, the K♥ was the highest heart left, so North was very likely taking that book anyway (only a West cut could stop it). South spent a spade for nothing and should have thrown a low club or diamond instead. Don't trump your partner's winner.

Trick 3. South won, so South leads. South leads the A♦. Everyone follows with diamonds. South's ace wins.

Trick 4. South leads the 6♦. West, out of diamonds, cuts with the 9♠. North plays 5♦, East plays 8♦. West's spade wins.

And so on for 13 tricks. At the end, North–South count their books against 7, East–West against 5, and the scores go on the sheet.

Beginner mistakes to skip

• Trumping your partner's winning card. If your partner's card is already winning the trick, play low and save your spade.
• Overbidding a long side suit. Seven hearts are not seven books. After the first two or three rounds, opponents run out and cut them with spades.
• Forgetting about bags. Making your bid is good. Making it by four every hand costs you 100 points every two or three hands.
• Leading spades too early. You can't before they're broken, and even after, pulling trump out of everyone's hand usually helps the team with more of it.
• Forgetting the jokers and the 2♦ are spades. Online the game won't let you misplay them. At a real table, it's a common way beginners renege.
• Panicking when you're set. One bad hand is 50 or 70 points. Quick matches swing hard; play the next hand.

Words you'll hear at the table

• Book: a trick. "We need two more books." See book.
• Bag: an extra book over your bid.
• Set: missing your contract. "Let's set them."
• Cut: playing a spade on another suit. See trump.
• Nil: bidding zero. See nil.
• Boston: one team taking all 13 books. See Boston.

The full list lives in the spades glossary.

Where to go next

Once you've played a couple of hands, pick one of these:

• How spades scoring works, with worked examples.
• How to bid in spades, so your bids get sharper.
• Spades strategy, for the plays that win close games.
• Play spades online with friends, to set up a private table.

The quickest way to learn is still to play. You can start a free game right now in your browser: no sign-up, no download, and bots will sit in any seat your friends haven't taken yet.