What you need
A standard 52-card deck and four players in two fixed partnerships, partners sitting opposite each other. You also need a score sheet with a column per team; our printable keeps bids, tricks and bags side by side.
Cards rank from ace (high) to 2 (low) in every suit. Spades are always trumps (a trump beats any card of another suit), which is why the game needs no trump-naming step.
Setup
Pick the first dealer at random; the deal then passes to the left. Deal all 52 cards one at a time, clockwise, so everyone holds 13. Sort your hand by suit.
Agree the target before you start: 500 points is standard, 200 or 300 makes a shorter game.
How to play
Bidding
Starting with the player to the dealer’s left, each player states the number of tricks they expect to win, from 1 to 13. Nobody may pass and there is only one round. A team’s contract is the sum of its two bids: if North bids 3 and South bids 4, North-South must win at least 7 tricks together.
Nil is a bid of zero tricks. The nil bidder promises to win no tricks at all, while their partner still tries to make their own bid. Blind nil is a nil declared before looking at your cards; the bidder may then swap two cards with their partner. Most tables allow blind nil only to a team trailing by 100 points or more.
The play
The player to the dealer’s left leads any card except a spade. Everyone must follow suit if they can; a player with no card of the suit led may play anything, including a spade. The highest spade in the trick wins it; if no spade was played, the highest card of the suit led wins. The winner leads the next trick.
Spades cannot be led until they have been “broken”, that is until someone has played a spade on another suit, or unless the leader has only spades left.
Scoring and winning
- Contract made: 10 points per trick bid, plus 1 point per extra trick (a “bag”).
- Contract failed: lose 10 points per trick bid. (Bicycle’s rules simply score 0 for a failed bid; the online-standard rules on pagat.com use the penalty.)
- Bags: every time a team collects 10 bags over the course of the game, it loses 100 points. The last digit of a team’s score shows its bag count.
- Nil: 100 points if the bidder takes no tricks, minus 100 if they take any. Tricks won by a failed nil bidder count as bags, not toward the partner’s bid. Blind nil scores plus or minus 200.
The first team to reach 500 points wins. If both pass 500 in the same deal, the higher score wins.
Common variants
- Jokers as top trumps. Many groups remove the 2 of hearts and 2 of clubs and add two jokers as the highest spades (big joker, little joker, then the 2 of spades or ace).
- Partnership bidding. Partners discuss and agree a single team bid instead of bidding one at a time, often with a minimum of 4 tricks per team.
- No leading restriction. Some play that spades may be led at any time.
- Three players. Remove the 2 of clubs and deal 17 cards each; everyone plays for themselves.
- Two players. No deal. Players alternately draw the top card of the deck: keep it or discard it face down and take the next card, until each has 13 cards. Then bid and play as usual.
- Individual Spades. Bicycle’s rules describe a version for 3 to 5 players with no partnerships; each player bids and scores alone.
Tips for first games
- Count your sure tricks (aces, kings with the ace gone, long spades) and bid those. Count “maybe” tricks as half.
- Bid slightly under what you expect rather than over: a bag costs you later, a failed contract costs you now.
- When your partner bids nil, take every trick you can and lead high cards so they can dump their high cards under yours.
Frequently asked questions
Can you lead a spade on the first trick? No. Spades must be broken first, unless you hold nothing but spades.
What happens if the two bids add up to 13? Nothing special in the standard rules, though some groups forbid total bids of exactly 13 so that both teams cannot make their contracts.
What is a bag in Spades? An overtrick, a trick won beyond your bid. Each bag is worth 1 point, but 10 accumulated bags cost 100 points.
Can you play Spades with two players? Yes, with the draw-your-hand method above. It plays well but loses the partnership element.
Does a failed nil wreck the partner’s bid? Not automatically. The partner’s bid is scored on its own, but the nil bidder’s tricks do not count toward it and become bags.
