By paying close attention to what cards fall early in the game you can play to your partner’s strength and they can play to yours. When playing Spades it is important to always remember your partner. For Blind Nil, these values are doubles (200 points). You can opt to bid nothing which (Nil bid), if successful, will reap your team extra 100 points. Not all Spades games use bags, but ours does. This isn't a bad thing per se, but if you gather 10 bags you will deducted 100 points.

Bags, or tricks won in excess of the contract, count as one point each. Tricks count ten points each for a partnership if the contract is made, and ten against if it is set.

This is true of both games ending at a point value and timed games. In the case of a tie for first, the game will continue until there is a clear winner. The game does not allow ties for first place. If you play a Spade and no one else does, you win the trick. If you are out of the lead suit, you can play any card you like.

Now for the tricky part and the reason the game is calls Spades. The highest card in that suit wins the trick. Play begins with the player to the dealer's left leading a card. Your bid and your partners are then added together and this is the number of tricks your team must take. To start you must estimate how many tricks you think you can take with your hand. Each player plays one card and together they are called a trick. The game begins with all cards being dealt. If a player bids Nil, (meaning they expect to win no tricks), then they may, depending on the rule settings, be allowed to exchange up to four cards with their partner once everyone else has bid. The sum of partnership bids are called the contract. Starting with the dealer, each player in turn bids the number of tricks she expects to win. The hand is sorted by suit, then rank: Clubs, Diamonds, Spades, Hearts. The layoutĮach player is dealt a hand of 13 cards from a 52 card deck. The object of this game is to be the first team to reach 300 or 500 points. Players sitting across from each other are partners on the same team. Spades is a trick-based card game for 4 players. In general, the goal of each Hand of Spades is to predict or Bid on how many Tricks you will take during that hand. It is a partnership card game that, like Bridge, is descended from the old English game of Whist. Spades is a trick-taking card game devised in the United States in the 1930s and became popular in the 1940s.

Spades hearts and poker card game books