Spades Rules — How to Play and Keep Score
Spades is a bidding trick-taking game in which spades are always trump. Before each hand every player promises a number of tricks, and after play you record what they actually took. Precision is rewarded twice over: hitting the number scores well, and quietly taking one extra trick too often eventually costs a hundred points. The bidding template fits because each round needs both a bid and a result per player.
Overview
Spades is a bidding trick-taking game in which spades are always trump. Before each hand every player promises a number of tricks, and after play you record what they actually took. Precision is rewarded twice over: hitting the number scores well, and quietly taking one extra trick too often eventually costs a hundred points. The bidding template fits because each round needs both a bid and a result per player.
Setup
Four players in fixed partnerships, sitting opposite their partner, is the standard game. Deal the whole 52-card deck, thirteen cards each. Starting to the dealer's left, each player states a bid from zero to thirteen. In partnership play the two bids on a side are added together to form the side's contract. Spades cannot be led until a spade has been played on an earlier trick or the leader holds nothing else.
Scoring
Score each side, not each player, when partnerships are on.
Making the contract. If the side takes at least as many tricks as it bid, it scores ten points per trick bid, plus the bag value for each trick above the bid. A side bidding five and taking seven scores 50 plus 2, so 52.
Failing the contract. If the side takes fewer tricks than it bid, it scores minus ten per trick bid and gains no bags. Bidding five and taking four scores minus 50.
Bags. The extra tricks accumulate across the whole game in a separate counter. Each time the counter reaches the bag limit, subtract the bag penalty from the side's score and reduce the counter by the limit. This must be folded forward through the rounds in order rather than computed per hand in isolation, because a hand that adds three bags may cross the limit once.
Nil. A nil bid contributes nothing to the side's trick target. A successful nil adds the nil value and the partner's contract is scored separately on the partner's own bid and tricks. A broken nil subtracts the nil value, and the tricks the nil bidder took become bags if that setting is on. Blind nil works identically at the higher value.
Ties in bidding. All four bids together may total more or less than thirteen; nothing forces them to add up.
Ending the game
The game ends at the end of the hand in which any side reaches the target. If both sides cross in the same hand, the higher total wins. If they are tied, play another hand. Some groups also end the game immediately if a side falls below minus 200.
Common variations
Playing to 200 or 300 makes a much shorter session. Turning bags off entirely removes the sandbag trap and speeds up casual play. Ten-for-two scoring, where a made bid pays only the bid and overtricks pay nothing, is popular with groups who dislike bag arithmetic.
Scoring at a glance
| Who wins | First to target |
|---|---|
| Played to | 500 points by default |
| Score sheet | A bid and a result per player per round; the score is derived |
| Typical round score | -200 – 200 |
| Negative scores | Possible |
| Worth knowing | Two entries per player per hand, a bid and the tricks actually taken. All bids across the table add up to at most thirteen with four players. |
Spades — score sheet
Worked example
Settings: targetScore: 500, teamPlay: true, overtrickValue: 1, bagsEnabled: true,
bagLimit: 10, bagPenalty: 100, nilValue: 100, failedNilCountsAsBags: true.
Partnerships: North/South and East/West. Team bid is the sum of both partners'.
| Hand | N/S bid | N/S took | E/W bid | E/W took | N/S score | E/W score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 7 | 9 | 6 | 4 | +72 | −60 |
| 2 | 5 | 5 | 8 | 8 | +50 | +80 |
| 3 | 4 | 8 | 9 | 5 | +44 | −90 |
| 4 | 6 | 6 | 7 | 7 | +60 | +70 |
| 5 | 4 (incl. one nil) | 7 | 6 | 6 | +143 | +60 |
Bag count carried forward for N/S: 2 after hand 1, 2 after hand 2, 6 after hand 3, 6 after hand 4, then hand 5 adds 3 more — reaching 9. Still under the limit.
Running totals:
| After | N/S | E/W | N/S bags |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 72 | −60 | 2 |
| 2 | 122 | 20 | 2 |
| 3 | 166 | −70 | 6 |
| 4 | 226 | 0 | 6 |
| 5 | 369 | 60 | 9 |
Expected standings after hand 5: N/S 369 (rank 1), E/W 60 (rank 2).
finished: false — neither side has reached 500.
Hand 5 in detail, because it exercises the most machinery at once: N/S bid 4 total,
of which one partner declared nil. The nil succeeded, paying 100. The other partner
bid 4 and the team took 7 tricks in total — 3 of those belong to the nil bidder's
partner beyond the contract. Team score is 4 × 10 = 40, plus 3 × 1 = 3 overtricks,
plus the 100 nil bonus, giving 143.
What this catches:
Bags are cumulative across hands, not per hand. The counter must be folded forward through the whole match. Computing bags per hand in isolation means the penalty never fires. Here N/S sit on 9 — one more bag and they lose 100 and the counter drops to 0, not to 10 and not reset to a fresh count of the excess.
A set costs the bid, not the tricks. E/W bid 6 and took 4 in hand 1: they lose
6 × 10 = 60, not 4 × 10. In hand 3 they bid 9 and took 5, losing 90. A set team
also banks no bags.
Overtricks are worth almost nothing now and a lot later. N/S's two extra tricks in hand 1 are worth 2 points, but they are also two-tenths of a 100-point penalty. An implementation that scores overtricks but forgets to accumulate them gets every early hand right and the match wrong.
House rules and settings
Every table plays Spades a little differently. These are the 11 rules groups argue about. Each one is a setting in the app — and changing it recalculates a match that is already in progress, which is the thing no other score keeper does.
Play to: what is the default in Spades?
The first side to reach this total at the end of a hand wins the game.
Default: 500. Adjustable from 100 to 1000 in steps of 50.
In the app: “Play to”.
Partnerships: on or off in Spades?
Turn on for the usual four-player game where players sitting opposite each other pool their bids and tricks. Turn off for cutthroat, where every player scores alone.
Default: on.
In the app: “Partnerships”.
Points per bag: what is the default in Spades?
What each trick taken beyond the bid is worth. These extra tricks are called bags and they are usually worth very little on purpose.
Default: 1. Adjustable from 0 to 5 in steps of 1.
In the app: “Points per bag”.
Bag penalty: on or off in Spades?
Whether collecting too many extra tricks over the course of a game eventually costs you a large block of points.
Default: on.
In the app: “Bag penalty”.
Bags before penalty: what is the default in Spades?
How many extra tricks a side can pile up before the penalty fires. The counter then drops by this amount and starts filling again.
Default: 10. Adjustable from 1 to 20 in steps of 1.
In the app: “Bags before penalty”.
Bag penalty size: what is the default in Spades?
How many points are taken away each time the bag limit is crossed.
Default: 100. Adjustable from 0 to 300 in steps of 10.
In the app: “Bag penalty size”.
Nil worth: what is the default in Spades?
Points gained for promising to take no tricks at all and succeeding, or lost for taking even one.
Default: 100. Adjustable from 0 to 300 in steps of 25.
In the app: “Nil worth”.
Blind nil worth: what is the default in Spades?
Points gained or lost for promising to take no tricks before you have looked at your cards.
Default: 200. Adjustable from 0 to 500 in steps of 50.
In the app: “Blind nil worth”.
Failed nil tricks become bags: on or off in Spades?
Whether the tricks a broken nil bidder accidentally won are added to the side's bag counter as well as costing the nil penalty.
Default: on.
In the app: “Failed nil tricks become bags”.
Minimum side bid: what is the default in Spades?
The smallest number of tricks a partnership is allowed to bid between them. Four is a common house minimum. Leave at zero to allow any bid.
Default: 0. Adjustable from 0 to 6 in steps of 1.
In the app: “Minimum side bid”.
Bidding house rule: what are the options in Spades?
Whiz forces you to bid either nil or the exact number of spades you hold. Suicide requires one partner in every partnership to bid nil. Mirror forces everyone to bid exactly the number of spades in their hand.
Default: Free bidding. Four options:
In the app: “Bidding house rule”.
Variants of Spades
Cutthroat
Three or four players each score for themselves with no partner, so bids never combine and nil is far riskier.
Two-player Spades
A drafting phase replaces the deal, each player bids alone, and the same scoring table applies.
Spades is also known as
Call Bridge, Cutthroat Spades. These are the same game — the rules and the score sheet above apply to all of them.
Keep score offline
The sheet above works in your browser. Cardzo for iPhone remembers your players, survives a closed tab, and works in a field with no signal.
Coming to the App Store.