Spades
You and Partner against West and East. First to 500. .
You and Partner against West and East. First to 500. .
Spades are always trump — there's no auction for the suit. What you bid is the number of tricks you'll take, your partner bids too, and the two are added into one contract. Make it and you score ten times the bid. Miss it and you lose ten times the bid. That's the game.
Every trick you take above your bid is a bag, worth one measly point. Free money, surely?
No. Ten bags costs you a hundred points. They accumulate across hands and they never go away until they bite. Which turns the whole game upside down: there are moments where the correct play is to deliberately lose a trick you could easily win, because you've already made your bid and that trick is a liability.
Your partner here understands this. Once the team has made its contract, it stops taking tricks and starts throwing them — which is exactly what a decent human partner does, and exactly what most free spades bots never do.
Bid nil and you're promising to take no tricks at all. Manage it and your team scores 100. Take a single trick and you lose 100 — and those tricks become bags, and they don't help your partner make their bid either. A busted nil is a catastrophe with three separate teeth in it.
Go nil only with no aces, no high spades, and few spades at all. A queen of spades will get dragged out and win something. A bare king in a side suit is a trap unless it's hiding behind three or four others.
And when your partner goes nil, your job changes completely: you play high, deliberately taking tricks off them so they never have to win one. The partner at this table does that for you.
The rules and strategy shelf — how to count a cribbage hand, why more discs in Reversi means you're losing, and the FreeCell formula everybody gets wrong.
Every trick you take ABOVE your bid is a bag. Each one is worth a single point, which sounds harmless — and it's a slow poison. When your bags reach ten, you lose 100 points and the count resets. That's why overshooting your bid is a real mistake, and why good players will deliberately throw a trick away rather than take one they don't need.
Bidding zero: you're promising to take no tricks at all. Pull it off and your team scores 100. Take even a single trick and you lose 100 — and those tricks become bags for your team, and they don't help your partner make their contract either. A busted nil is one of the worst things that can happen to you in this game.
When you have no aces, no high spades, and very few spades at all. A queen of spades or higher will get forced out and win a trick you didn't want. A bare king in a side suit is dangerous — it needs three or four cards of the same suit to hide behind. This table's opponents apply exactly those rules, and they'll tell you when your own hand looks like a nil.
Spades must be 'broken' before anyone can lead one — a spade has to be played on some earlier trick first, usually by someone who was void in the suit that was led. Until then you have to lead something else. The exception is if spades are literally all you have left.
You bid a number of tricks and failed to take that many, so you lose ten times your bid. Bid seven and take six, and it's minus seventy — worse than taking nothing at all. Which is exactly why bidding is the real skill in spades: an honest bid you can make beats an ambitious one you can't.
Yes. Spades are permanent trump — there's no bidding for the suit as there is in euchre or bridge. The two of spades beats the ace of hearts. Everything about the game follows from that one fact.