Your first game of Spades

Set up

Four people play in two partnerships. You and the player across from you are partners against the other two. Deal a 52-card deck, 13 cards each. The player to the dealer’s left bids first and leads the first trick. Spades are always trump.

Your first hand

Look at your cards and bid how many tricks you expect to take, from 1 to 13. A trick is one round of four cards, one from each player. Your team’s contract is your bid plus your partner’s. A bid of nil means you expect to take no tricks at all.

Then play. The first player lays a card and the others follow suit if they can. If you cannot follow suit, you may play any card, and a spade beats every other suit. The highest spade wins the trick, or the highest card of the suit led if no spade was played. The winner leads next. Nobody can lead a spade until a spade has been played, unless they have only spades.

How a game ends

After all 13 tricks, each team scores its deal. A team that makes its contract scores 10 points for each trick it bid, plus 1 for every extra trick, called a bag. A team that falls short loses 10 points for each trick it bid. A successful nil is worth 100 points, and a failed one costs 100. Ten bags cost a team 100 points. The first team to the game score, 300 or 500, wins, and a team that falls to −200 loses.

A short example

You bid 3 and your partner bids 4, so your contract is 7. Your team takes 8 tricks. That is 70 points for the contract and 1 for the bag, 71 in all. Had your team taken only 6 tricks, it would have lost 70 points.