Spades — rules card

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Spades 4 players · one 52-card pack, in two partnerships THE IDEA • You and the player opposite are a TEAM. You win together and you lose together. • Before playing, each of you says how many tricks you will take. The two bids add up, and the team has to make the total. • Highest score wins — the opposite of Hearts, which is next to it on the shelf. PLAYING A TRICK • You must follow the suit that was led if you hold it. Holding a spade is not an excuse to play one. • A spade beats any card of any other suit, however small. Among spades, and among cards of the suit led, the higher card wins. • Nobody may LEAD a spade until a spade has already been played on some other suit. SCORING • Make your team's combined bid and you score 10 a trick, plus 1 for each extra trick beyond it. • Miss it and you lose 10 a trick for the whole bid. Taking nine when you bid ten costs you a hundred points. • Those extra tricks are BAGS, and every ten of them costs 100. Bidding low and coasting is not a strategy here; it is a debt. NIL • Bidding NIL says you will take no tricks at all. Make it and your side gains 100; take even one and it loses 100. • Nil is scored for you alone, before the team total is worked out. • A nil bidder's tricks do not count towards the team's contract. That is exactly what makes nil dangerous for your partner as well as for you. WHAT THE TABLE TELLS YOU • Your partner is named as your partner on the felt. Which two seats are a team is not something to work out from the scoring. • The game's own estimate of your hand is offered as a marked suggestion when you bid. The opponents use the same number. • Cards you may not play are greyed rather than hidden. WORDS THIS GAME USES Trick — One card from each player. Here you WANT them — as many as you said, and no more than you can afford. Trump — A suit that beats all others. Always spades here, which is why nobody bids for it. Contract — The number of tricks your team promised. Two bids added together. Bag — A trick you took beyond your contract. Harmless one at a time and worth minus a hundred once you have ten. Nil — A bid of zero. Worth a hundred to make and a hundred to miss. Setting — Stopping the other team making their contract. Often worth more than making your own. WHERE THESE CAME FROM Pagat.com — Spades. Spades is a twentieth-century American folk game with no governing body. Pagat records the common forms; the bag rule below is the one almost everybody plays and almost nobody agrees the details of. w.richardpringle.com/games/spades/ ▲ FOLD ▼ ▲ FOLD ▼ ▲ FOLD ▼ FOLD & TEAR