Spades rules and scoring

• Bidding
• Playing tricks
• Scoring
• Nil
• Other player counts
• Score sheet

Four players in two teams of two, partners sitting opposite. Each hand, everyone bids how many tricks they'll take, and each team tries to take at least its combined bid. Make it and you score the bid × 10, plus 1 for every extra trick. Spades are always trump. First team past 500 wins.

Dealing and bidding

• Deal the whole deck one card at a time, clockwise: 13 cards each, so every hand is 13 tricks.
• Starting left of the dealer and going once round, each player looks at their cards and bids the number of tricks they expect to win. You don't have to bid higher than the player before you.
• Partners' bids are added together into the team's contract. You don't need to hit your own number — only the team's total.
• Bids are called aloud in turn, so a partner who bids second knows the first bid. Partners can't discuss their hands.

Playing the tricks

• The player left of the dealer leads the first trick; after that, whoever won the last trick leads.
• You must follow the suit led if you can. If you can't, you may play anything — including a spade.
• The highest spade takes the trick. If no spade was played, the highest card of the suit led takes it.
• Spades can't be led until they're broken — until someone has played a spade on another suit because they couldn't follow. The exception: a player holding nothing but spades.
• You can't trump a suit you're able to follow, even if someone before you already has.

How scoring works

Result	Points
Make your contractTake at least the team's combined bid.	bid × 10
Each extra trick (a “bag”)	+1
Miss your contractBicycle's rules score 0; Pagat's deduct the bid, −bid × 10. Agree which before you start.	0 or −bid × 10
Nil madeBid nil and take no tricks at all.	+100
Nil brokenTake even one trick.	−100
Blind nilDeclared before looking at your cards.	±200

The hand is scored against your bid, not against the other team: 9 tricks on a bid of 10 scores nothing (or costs you 100), while 3 on a bid of 3 scores 30.

Bags and sandbagging

Extra tricks are worth only 1 point each, but at many tables they also pile up (Pagat treats this as standard; Bicycle lists it as something “some games” do): every time a team's running total of bags reaches 10, it loses 100 points. That's what stops a team from bidding low and hoovering up tricks.

Bidding nil

A nil bid says you'll take no tricks at all. It's scored on its own — even in a partnership — and isn't added to the team's contract: your partner has to make their own bid alone. Any trick the nil bidder does take still counts as a bag for the team, but can't help fill the partner's bid.

Blind nil is the same bid made before looking at your hand, for double. Usually it's only allowed to a team that's 100 or more behind, and the bidder then swaps two cards face down with their partner.

How it ends

The first team past 500 wins. If both get there in the same hand, the higher total takes it. 200 or 300 makes a shorter game.

Playing with other counts

• Two players: don't deal. Take turns drawing: look at the top card and either keep it and discard the next face down, or discard it and keep the next. Carry on until you each hold 13.
• Three players: deal 17 each and set the last card aside, so a hand is 17 tricks. Everyone plays for themselves.
• Six players: shuffle two decks together with two low cards removed. Traditionally three teams of two.
• Cutthroat: four players with no partners, each bidding and scoring alone.