Play Spades Online! Hardwood Spades offers a beautiful way to play classic spades along with other more unique variants to keep things exciting. Not only can you play by yourself but you can play online with people from around the globe, 24hrs a day. Our extensive collection of free online card games spans 10 classic solitaire titles, as well as several other best in class card games including 2 classic versions of Bridge, Classic Solitaire, Canfield Solitaire, and Blackjack, to name a few.

Spades is a casual card game developed in the 1930's in the USA. Spades is played with a basic set of 52 cards and card value ranks from 2, the lowest, to Ace, the highest. The version of 24/7 Spades is the most popular and is played with four Spades players in a team format, where players across the table are considered teammates.

Spades is a trick-taking card game devised in the United States in the 1930s and became popular in the 1940s. It is a partnership card game that, like Bridge, is descended from the old English game of Whist. In general, the goal of each Hand of Spades is to predict or Bid on how many Tricks you will take during that hand.

Basic Rules

Spades is a trick-based card game for 4 players. Players sitting across from each other are partners on the same team. The object of this game is to be the first team to reach 300 or 500 points.

The layout

Each player is dealt a hand of 13 cards from a 52 card deck. The hand is sorted by suit, then rank: Clubs, Diamonds, Spades, Hearts. Cards that are out of play are darkened.

Bidding

Starting with the dealer, each player in turn bids the number of tricks she expects to win. Possible bids are from Nil to thirteen. The sum of partnership bids are called the contract. 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.

How to play Spades

The game begins with all cards being dealt. Each player plays one card and together they are called a trick. To start you must estimate how many tricks you think you can take with your hand. Your bid and your partners are then added together and this is the number of tricks your team must take. Play begins with the player to the dealer's left leading a card. The highest card in that suit wins the trick. Now for the tricky part and the reason the game is calls Spades. If you are out of the lead suit, you can play any card you like. If you play a Spade and no one else does, you win the trick. So Spades are trump cards. In this case the highest Spade wins.

The game does not allow ties for first place. In the case of a tie for first, the game will continue until there is a clear winner. This is true of both games ending at a point value and timed games.

Scoring

Tricks count ten points each for a partnership if the contract is made, and ten against if it is set. Bags, or tricks won in excess of the contract, count as one point each. This isn't a bad thing per se, but if you gather 10 bags you will deducted 100 points. Not all Spades games use bags, but ours does. You can opt to bid nothing which (Nil bid), if successful, will reap your team extra 100 points. -100 if you fail. For Blind Nil, these values are doubles (200 points).

About this Spades game

When playing Spades it is important to always remember your partner. 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. At its best, both you and your partner’s hands will be stronger than they ever could be individually and this strength is both satisfying to grasp and the secret to success in the game of Spades.

You can play classic Spades online on our website. And it's free! No download, no login required, simple gameplay! Also this free online game is available in mobile browser across all your Android, iOS and Windows devices. Good luck and have a good time!

Internet Spades Game

How to Play Spades

Players

In a typical game, there are four players and two team. You are on the same team as the person across from you and the same goes for the other two.

The Goal of Spades

The goal is to accumulate points, and the first to 500 points wins.

Dealing

The dealer will deal out all of the cards so each player will end up with 13 to start.

Bidding

Bidding is simply guessing how many 'tricks' you can take. Before each round of Spades begins, each player will bid (or guess) how many tricks they will take.

The teams then add together the total number of bids. This is the number of tricks that team has to win in order to get a positive score.

The first player to bid is the person to the left of the dealer. Bidding then continues clockwise around the table.

You may bid on any number from 0 to 13. But be smart and remember that it's very difficult to get all or even half of the tricks. A bid of zero or 'nil' is another strategy we'll talk about shortly.

Here's an example: Sarah deals. Beyonce who is to her left bids 3. Billy then bids 1. Terrance bids 4. And finally Sarah bids 4. Billy and Sarah's goal is to win at least 5 tricks based on their bids (4+1), Terrance and Beyonce will attempt to win at least 7 (4+3).

As mentioned previously, a bid of zero is also called a nil bid. This is basically a player trying NOT to win any tricks. Why would anyone do that though? Well, there's a huge bonus if you can bid nil and succeed. There's also a penalty for bidding nil and getting 1 or more tricks. We'll talking about scoring shortly.

Playing Spades

After all of the bidding is done, the player to the dealers left begins by playing any card EXCEPT for a spade. It can be any heart, diamond or club, but no spades.

Then, again in clockwise, each player lays down a card (trick) face up. The card must be of the same suit as the person who started (in this case, the person to the left of the dealer). If you do not have the same suit, you can play any card of any suit!

If someone plays a spade, that spade trumps all other cards EXCEPT for higher spades. So even if someone plays the Ace of diamonds, and I play the 2 of spades, I win that trick if no other spades are played. If no spades are played, the highest card wins of the suit that was played first. The winner of each trick leads on the next.

After the first spade has been played, then spades are 'broken.'

Scoring

So we've already talked about how the goal is to get the number of tricks that you and your partner bid. If you bid 5, you want to get at least 5. If you get exactly 5, you win 10x your bid, so 50 points. Additional tricks (overtricks) are only worth one point apiece.

This means if my partner and I bid 5, then get 7 tricks, our total score for that round will come to 52.

However, if we don't get 5 tricks, we're in trouble. This means we lose 10 points for each bid. So if we bid 5, then get 4 tricks - we lose 50 points! Eek!

Sandbagging: Each trick we win that is over the bid is known as a bag. Back to the example: if we bid 5 and get 7, then we get 2 bags.

Bags can also be bad. Each round you keep track of the number of bags you get, and if you reach a total of 10 bags, you lose 100 points on that round. Your bag count then starts back at zero.

Remember the nil (or zero) bid? If you can pull of a nil bid and get no tricks, you receive 100 points! This will be in addition the number that your partner wins or loses. If you bid nil and don't pull it off, you lose 100 points so it can be very detrimental as well. Again, your partner's score is still factored into the round as well.

If a nil bid fails, the tricks won by the nil bidder don't count towards the partner's bid, but would count as bags for the team if the total goes over your partner's bid.

Internet Spades 24/7

The side that reaches 500 points first wins the game. If both sides reach 500 points in a single deal, the side with the higher score wins. Got it? Then get back up there and play some Spades!!!

Terminology

Trick:

When all four cards are layed out, the trick is what you call the winner of that particular throw down.

Book:

This is pretty much the same thing as a trick. Treat it as such.

Hand:

The series of books or tricks where all 13 cards that is player is dealt are played.

Bid:

This is the number of tricks/books that you think you will get in any given hand. You combine the number you think you will get with the number your teammate estimates

Contract:

This is the number of tricks/books that you and your partner must get for the hand in order to not be docked.

Under trick:

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It is just like it sounds: not getting quite the number of tricks that you wanted for a hand. This usually results in loss of points.

Bag:

This is also referred to as an overtrick. This is when you get more books than you estimated before the hand. Ten bags incur a penalty of 100 docked points.

Void:

When you don't have any of the cards of the suit that is being played.

Trump:

Having a better card to lay down than the others that have been played. Spades trump all in this game of course!

Sluff:

This is when you don't have the suit being played but you also don't have a trump card. This is sometimes a good thing early on when you are trying to get rid of some of the less desireable cards.

Nil:

When you declare that you will get no books/tricks you are declaring nil. If you accomplish this, you get a lot more points!!