Play with other people
Anyone can join a table with its code. There are no accounts and nothing to install. A spades table is always four seats in two partnerships, and any seat nobody is sitting in is played by the computer — so a table works with two people, or three, or four.
Your table code
Send the link to whoever you want to play with. It opens the game with this table already chosen; they still pick their own name. If it is easier to read the code out, that works too.
Send the code to the people you want to play with, wait for them to appear in the seats below, then start. Any seat still empty is played by the computer, so you can start whenever you like.
Seats
| Seat | Partnership | Who | Status |
|---|
Start a game
The game
What you can do
Your hand
This trick
Last completed trick
Partnerships
| Partnership | Score | Bags | Bid / took |
|---|
Players
| Player | Side | Bid | Tricks | Cards |
|---|
Hands played
What has happened G
Newest entry first. Press G to jump here, then Up and Down to move entry by entry, Home for the newest and End for the oldest. This region is never spoken automatically, so you can read back through it at your own pace.
How spades works
The object
You and the player opposite are a partnership. Before a card is played, everybody says how many of the thirteen tricks they think they will take. Your two bids added together are your contract, and the whole hand is about meeting it. First partnership to the target wins.
The bidding
Bidding starts to the dealer's left and goes round once, out loud, so the later seats know what has already been promised. A bid is any number from one to thirteen — or nil, which is a promise to take no tricks at all.
Choose your bid from the list, then press Place this bid. Moving through the list never bids on its own, so you can read down all fourteen choices, or press H to hear your hand again, without committing to anything until you press the button.
The play
- Spades are always trump. A spade beats any card of any other suit.
- Follow the suit led if you can. If you cannot, play anything — including a spade, whenever you like.
- Spades cannot be led until they have been broken, which happens as soon as anybody plays one — usually somebody trumping in on a suit they could not follow. If spades are all you hold you may lead one anyway, and that breaks them too.
- The highest spade takes the trick. If no spade is played, the highest card of the suit led takes it.
The scoring
- Make the contract and it is worth ten points a trick.
- Miss it by even one and you lose ten points a trick for the whole bid — not the difference. Bidding seven and taking six is minus seventy.
- Every trick over the contract is worth one point and one bag.
- Ten bags costs a hundred points, and the count carries on from whatever is left over. This is why quietly over-performing every hand is a way to lose.
Nil
A bid of nil is a promise to take nothing at all. Bring it in and it is worth a hundred; take a single trick and it costs a hundred. It is scored on its own, and your partner's bid is still an ordinary contract that still has to be made — so a partner sitting on nil is somebody you are now covering for.
Playing by keyboard
Every shortcut below is also a button on screen, so nothing is only reachable one way.
- Left and Right move along your hand; Enter plays the card you are on.
- H reads your hand, grouped by suit, with your spade count at the end. It works while you are choosing a bid too, which is when it is most wanted.
- B reads the bids and where both contracts stand. In the other games on this site B reports a bug; here that is Shift+B, because in spades the contract is asked for far more often than anything else.
- S reads the scores and the bag counts.
- T reads the trick so far and who is winning it.
- C says how many tricks have gone and whether spades are broken.
- W says who is at the table and who is partnered with whom.
- N moves the game on — deal the next hand, start a new game.
- Enter on a button does what the button says.