Spades on PlayingCards.io

Can you guess how many tricks you'll win for your team?! Spades is a classic trick taking game with the twist of predicting your successes for points. It's a 4 player game traditionally played with two teams of 2 players each.

Spades Rules

Objective

• In Spades, the goal is to accurately predict how many tricks you will win per round.
• The cards are ranked A - 2 (high to low) and Spades suit is always trump, beating cards of any other suit.

Set-up

1. Spades is played using a standard 52 card deck.
2. Players divide themselves into two teams and sit so that they are opposite of their teammate (EXAMPLE: Team 1 - Player 1, Team 2 - Player 2, Team 1 - Player 3, Team 2 - Player 4).
3. The deck is shuffled and each player is dealt 13, one card at a time.

Playing the Game

• Each round of Spades has a Bidding phase and a Play phase.

  Bidding

  • Starting with the player left of the dealer, each player will say a bid. This bid is the number of tricks they think they will win this round (EXAMPLE: P2 bids 4 tricks based on the cards in their hand. P3 bids 5 tricks, etc).
  • The bids are then recorded for each player.

  Play

  • Starting with the player left of the dealer, each player must play one card into the middle.

  • Each player must follow suit of the first card played, if possible. If they cannot follow suit, they may play any card.

  • The winner of the trick is the player who played the highest ranking card (EXAMPLE: P2 started the trick with a K of Hearts, P3 followed with a 7 of Hearts, P3 does not have any Hearts so they play a 3 of Diamonds, P4 plays an A of Hearts. P4 wins the trick).

  • The winner takes the trick and starts a new trick by playing a card.

  • After all 13 tricks have been played, the round is over. Tricks are counted and compared to their bids.

    *Special Rules:

    • A Spade suited card cannot be the first card played in a trick unless the player has no other suits to play OR if Spades have been broken.
    • Spades are broken when a player cannot follow the suit of a trick and plays a Spade suited card onto the trick. Once this happens in a round, a player may then start a trick with a Spades suited card.

Scoring

• If a team reaches or exceeds their total bid amount (between both players on the team), they score 10 points for each trick up to their bid amount + 1 point for each trick beyond their bid amount (EXAMPLE: P1 bid 3 and P3 bid 4 for a total of 7. They won 8 tricks this round and thus score 71 points - 10 points for the first 7 tricks and 1 point for the 8th trick).

• Each trick won beyond the bid amount is known as a "Bag" and each Bag a team gets is recorded. Bags are worth 1 point each as previously mentioned. However, if a team's number of Bags reaches 10, their team's score is penalized -100 points.

• If a team does not reach their total bid amount in a round, they lose 10x their total bid amount (EXAMPLE: P2 and P4 each bid 3 for a total of 6, but they only won 5 tricks this past round. Their score is penalized -60 points).

  *Special Scoring Rules:

  • A player may bid Nil (0) during the Bidding phase if they think they will win 0 tricks. If they do not win any tricks on a Nil bid, they score 100 points for their team. Conversely, if they win any tricks on a Nil bid, they score -100 points for their team.
  • A player may also bid Blind Nil (0). This works the same way as a Nil bid except they make this bid without looking at their hand of cards before bidding. If a player wins 0 tricks on a Blind Nil bid, they score 200 points for their team. If they score any tricks on a Blind Nil Bid, they score -200 points for their team. *For PlayingCards.io, your cards will be dealt to you face-down. You must decide whether or not to bid Blind Nil before clicking them to be face-up. If you click the QTY value of your hand, you have the option to flip the entire hand at the same time for convenience.
  • Because of Blind Nil, it's important to ask players if they are bidding Blind Nil before they look at their hand.
  • Nil and Blind Nil bids are scored separately from normal scoring (EXAMPLE: If P1 bid 0 and P3 bid 5 and P1 ended up taking 0 tricks but P3 took 4, their team would score 100 points for P1's Nil bid and -50 for P3's bid of 5 for a total of 50 points for the round).

Winning

The first team to 500 or more points wins the game!