The Goal of Spades

The goal of Spades is to help your team make its contract.

At the start of each hand, every player bids the number of tricks they expect to win. Your bid and your partner’s bid are added together to form your team bid.

For example, if you bid 4 and your partner bids 3, your team contract is 7.

Your team needs to win at least 7 tricks to make the bid. If you take fewer than 7, your team is set and loses points.

Spades is usually played to 500 points. The first team to reach the target score wins, unless the selected rules say otherwise.

How Bidding Works

Before the hand begins, each player looks at their cards and makes a bid.

A bid is the number of tricks you think you can win. You are not bidding against the other players like an auction. Each player makes one bid, and the bids do not need to increase.

Your bid is added to your partner’s bid.

If you bid 4 and your partner bids 2, your team needs to win at least 6 tricks.

Good bidding is about judging your hand honestly. High cards can win tricks, but not every high card is safe. A King may be strong if you have smaller cards in that suit to support it. A long spade suit can be powerful because spades are trump. Short suits can also matter because they may let you play spades later when you cannot follow suit.

Try not to bid only on hope. A good Spades bid should feel realistic, not perfect.

See Spades Bidding Strategy for Beginners for counting tricks and avoiding overbids.

How to Play a Trick

After bidding, the player to the left of the dealer leads the first trick.

Play moves clockwise. The first card played sets the led suit.

Each player must follow the led suit if they can. For example, if clubs are led and you have a club, you must play a club.

If you do not have the led suit, you may play any other card. This is when you may discard a different suit or play a spade.

Once all four players have played one card, the trick is decided.

If no spades were played, the highest card in the led suit wins.

If one or more spades were played, the highest spade wins.

The winner of the trick collects it and leads the next trick.

How Scoring Works

Spades scoring is based on your team bid and how many tricks your team actually takes.

If your team makes its bid, you score 10 points for each trick bid.

For example, if your team bids 6 and takes 6 tricks, you score 60 points.

If your team takes extra tricks, those extra tricks are called bags or overtricks.

For example, if your team bids 6 and takes 8 tricks, you score 62 points: 60 points for the bid and 2 extra points for the overtricks.

Those 2 overtricks also count as 2 bags.

Bags can be risky. In many Spades games, collecting 10 bags gives your team a 100-point penalty.

If your team fails to make its bid, your team loses 10 points for each trick bid.

For example, if your team bids 6 but only takes 5 tricks, your team loses 60 points.

See What Are Bags in Spades for bag scoring and how to avoid the penalty.