How to play Spades

• 4 players in two teams of partners. Your partner sits across from you.
• The whole deck is dealt: 13 cards each.
• Spades are always trump. Any spade beats any card of another suit.
• Before playing, everyone bids how many tricks they'll take. Your team's bids add up to its contract: take at least that many tricks together, and you score.

Cards rank from ace (high) down to 2 in every suit.

• Bidding starts left of the dealer and goes round once. Everyone bids, and nobody passes.
• Bid the number of tricks you think you'll take: 1 to 13, or Nil (none at all).
• Count your aces and kings, your high spades, and an extra trick or two for a long run of spades or a suit you're short in (you can trump it).
• Everyone sees every bid as it's made, so you can bid with your partner.

• Nil is a promise to take no tricks at all: +100 if you keep it, −100 if you take even one. Your partner's bid is scored on its own.
• Blind Nil is Nil bid before you look at your cards: +200 or −200. You may bid it only when your team is 100 or more points behind at the deal.
• After bidding, a Blind Nil bidder passes 2 cards to their partner, and the partner passes 2 back. (If both partners bid Blind Nil, there's no swap.)

• The player left of the dealer leads the first trick.
• Follow suit if you can. If you can't, play any card, including a spade.
• The highest spade wins the trick. With no spade in it, the highest card of the suit led wins. The winner leads next.
• Spades can't be led until one has been played on another suit (“spades are broken”), unless you hold nothing but spades.

• Make your contract: 10 points for every trick bid, plus 1 for each trick over. Bid 7, take 9: 72.
• Miss it (you're “set”): minus 10 points for every trick bid. Bid 7, take 6: −70.
• Bags: each trick over your bid is a bag. Every 10 bags your team collects costs 100 points, so bidding too low has a price as well.
• A failed Nil's tricks don't help the partner's contract; they count as bags.

• The first team to 500 points wins. A private table's host may choose 300 for a shorter game.
• A team that falls to -200 or below loses straight away.
• If both teams pass the target in the same hand, the higher score wins; an exact tie plays another hand.

• When it's your bid, tap a number (or Nil), then the gold button to confirm.
• Every seat shows its bid and the tricks it has taken, such as “Bid 4 · 2”. The box in the corner shows whether spades are broken, the scores and each team's bags.
• When your team may bid Blind Nil, your cards arrive face down. Tap See my cards to look, or bid Blind Nil first.
• Cards passed to you in a swap are marked New until play begins.

• Bid a little low rather than high: a set costs far more than a bag.
• When your partner bids Nil, win tricks over them: play high when they might be stuck taking one.
• When an opponent bids Nil, lead low cards and let them take a trick if you can.
• Watch your bags as they near 10: an extra trick might cost 100.

• Shuffled like a real table. Before every deal the deck is shuffled, cut, shuffled, cut and shuffled again, starting from a fresh deck every hand. The first cut is near the middle; the second splits the deck into rough thirds and stacks them back so no third goes where it was.
• Truly random, using the same kind of cryptography that protects online banking. The deal is never adjusted to help or hurt anyone.
• Locked in before the deal. Each hand has a fingerprint, fixed before any card is dealt; its secret is revealed when the hand ends. Tap Check the deal in the table's ? menu and your browser re-creates the deal and checks it against what you saw, a Blind Nil swap included.