Bidding your hand
Count your likely winners — high spades, Aces and protected Kings — and bid that many. Your bid and your partner's are added into one team contract.
Spades with a partner, against the bots
Spades is partnership bidding: you and your partner predict how many tricks you will take, then try to hit that number exactly. Spades are always trumps, which makes counting them the core skill.
Play SpadesBags and penalties
Every trick above your contract is a bag worth one point now and a hundred-point penalty once you collect ten. Overbidding is expensive; overtaking is expensive more slowly.
Nil bids
Bid nil to claim you will take no tricks at all. It pays a hundred if you make it and costs a hundred if you fail, and your partner has to cover you all hand.
Tips that actually help
- Bid the hand you have, not the hand you want; a missed contract costs more than a small bid.
- Lead low in side suits early to find out where the danger sits.
- Do not trump your partner's winning trick — that is a bag you did not need.
- With a nil partner, take the tricks they cannot duck.
Common questions
- What score ends the game?
- The first partnership to 500 points wins.
- What is a bag?
- A trick taken beyond your team's bid. Ten bags cost your team a hundred points.
- Can I play nil every hand?
- You can bid it, but a failed nil is a hundred-point swing — save it for hands with no high cards in the long suits.