The best way to learn Spades is to deal out a hand and play it. The rules make far more sense with cards in front of you than they ever do on paper. So this page walks you through one full game, from the first shuffle to the final score, a step at a time, and then plays out a sample hand so you can watch the cards actually move. If you’d rather have the rules laid out as a straight reference, the Spades rules page covers everything in order.
Grab a deck and four chairs, and let’s go.
What You Need Before You Start
Four players, sitting as two teams. Partners sit across from each other, so you’re never next to the person you’re playing with. You’ll use a standard 52-card deck with the jokers removed. The cards rank from the ace at the top down to the two at the bottom, the same as most card games.
The one rule to keep in the back of your mind from the very start: spades are trump. Any spade, even the two, beats any card in the other three suits. That single fact is what the whole game turns on.
Step 1: Deal the Cards
Decide who deals first however you like; cutting the deck for high card is the common method. The dealer shuffles, the player on their right cuts, and then the whole deck is dealt out one card at a time, going clockwise, until each of the four players is holding 13 cards. Nothing is left over.
Pick up your hand and sort it by suit. It makes the next step a lot easier.
Step 2: Bid Your Tricks
Before anyone plays a card, every player has to predict how many tricks they’ll win this hand. A trick is just one round of four cards, one from each player. There are 13 tricks in a hand, so the four bids will eventually add up to somewhere around that number.
Look at your hand and count your likely winners. High spades are the safest bets, since they’re trump. Aces in the other suits usually win too. Kings are a maybe. Starting with the player to the dealer’s left, each person says a number out loud. You can’t pass, and your bid doesn’t have to be higher than anyone else’s.
Your bid and your partner’s bid get added together. That combined number is what your team is trying to hit. There’s also a special bid of zero, called Nil, where you’re promising to win no tricks at all, but I’d leave that one alone until you’ve got a few hands under your belt. If you want help learning to count a hand and choose a good number, the Spades bidding page goes deeper.
Step 3: Play the First Trick
The player to the dealer’s left leads the first trick by laying down any card except a spade. Going clockwise, everyone else plays one card on top. The rule that matters here is follow suit: if the first card is a heart and you have a heart, you must play a heart. Only when you’re completely out of the suit that was led can you play something else.
Whoever played the highest card of the led suit wins the trick, unless someone played a spade. A spade beats everything, so if anyone trumps in, the highest spade takes it. The winner scoops up those four cards and leads the next trick.
You’ll notice you can’t just start a trick with a spade whenever you feel like it. Spades have to be “broken” first, which only happens once somebody plays one because they couldn’t follow suit. It’s a rule that catches everyone out at first, and it’s explained fully on the breaking Spades page.
Step 4: Keep Winning Tricks
From there it’s the same beat over and over. Lead a card, everyone follows, the highest card or the highest spade wins, and the winner leads again. You work through all 13 tricks until every hand is empty.
The whole time, you and your partner are quietly trying to land on the number you bid together, no more and no fewer. Taking extra tricks isn’t a triumph in Spades. It actually causes problems later, which brings us to scoring.
Step 5: Score the Hand
Add up the tricks your team won. If you reached your combined bid, you score 10 points for each trick you bid. Bid 7 and make it, that’s 70 points. Any tricks past your bid are called bags, worth one point each, and they look like a nice little bonus until you’ve collected ten of them across the game, at which point they cost you 100 points all at once.
If your team came up short of its bid, you don’t score for the hand at all. Instead you lose 10 points for every trick you bid. So aiming too high is just as costly as aiming too low. Jot the score down, pass the deal to the left, and start the next hand. The full set of scoring situations, including the Nil bonuses, is on the Spades scoring page.
A Sample Hand, Played Out
Theory only gets you so far, so let’s deal you a hand and play through part of it. Say you’re sitting South, and you pick up these 13 cards:
- Spades: A, K, 4
- Hearts: Q, J, 7, 3
- Diamonds: A, 9, 5
- Clubs: K, 8, 2
Counting your winners, the ace and king of spades are about as safe as it gets, and the ace of diamonds should take a trick too. The king of clubs is a maybe. You bid 3 to keep it honest. Your partner bids 4, so your team needs 7 tricks this hand.
Trick 1. West leads the queen of clubs. You’re holding the king, so you follow suit and play it, hoping it wins. But East drops the ace of clubs on top, and the ace beats your king. East takes the trick. Lesson one: the highest card of the led suit wins, and your king isn’t safe when an ace is still out there.
Trick 2. East, having won, leads the three of diamonds. Everyone follows with diamonds, and you play your ace. Nothing beats it, so you win the trick and now it’s your turn to lead.
Trick 3. You lead the queen of hearts. North and East both follow with hearts. But West is out of hearts entirely, so West is allowed to play a spade, and lays down the two. That tiny two of spades breaks spades for the hand, and because it’s trump, it beats your queen and everyone else’s hearts. West wins the trick with the lowest card on the table. This is the moment most beginners finally understand what “trump” really means.
From here, spades are broken, so they can be led. A few tricks later you cash your ace and king of spades, and nobody can stop them, because they’re the two highest trumps in the deck. That’s two more tricks for your side.
When the dust settles, suppose your team took exactly 7 tricks between you. You bid 7 and made it, so you score 70 points. If you’d grabbed one extra and finished with 8, you’d still get 70, plus a single bag you’ll want to keep an eye on. Play it out a few times and this stops feeling like a rulebook and starts feeling like a game.
Your First Few Games
Don’t worry about playing perfectly when you’re starting out. Bid a little conservatively, follow suit, and pay attention to which high cards have already been played. Most beginners lose points two ways: by bidding more than their hand can deliver, and by accidentally taking tricks they didn’t need. Steer clear of both and you’ll hold your own at any table.
Once the basics feel natural and you want to start winning on purpose, the Spades strategy guide covers smarter bidding, working with your partner, and managing those bags before they turn into a 100-point hole.