Spades Strategy: Bid Right and Make Your Contract
How to win more games of Spades: count your sure winners, bid as a team, don't beat your partner, keep bags down and know when to bid nil.
Sunroom Games · Updated
Spades is a game of promises. Before every hand you and your partner say how many tricks you'll win, and the score rewards keeping that promise: not falling short, and not winning too many either. Good players aren't the ones with the best cards. They're the ones whose bids come true.
If you'd like the rules first, see how to play Spades.
Scoring in one minute
Your bid and your partner's are added together. Win at least that many tricks as a team and you score 10 points for each trick you bid, plus 1 for every extra trick. Fall short and you lose 10 for each trick you bid. The extra tricks are called bags, and every 10 bags a team collects costs it 100 points. A nil bid, promising to win no tricks at all, is worth 100 if it works and costs 100 if it doesn't.
So the best result is to win exactly what you bid. One trick too few costs far more than one too many, but too many adds up over a game.
1. Count your sure winners
Before you bid, go through your hand suit by suit and count the cards that should win a trick on their own:
- Aces in hearts, clubs and diamonds usually win, especially in a suit where you have five cards or fewer.
- The Ace of spades always wins. The King of spades is a good bet if you have at least one other spade to protect it.
- The Queen of spades is worth something with two or more spades beside her.
- Every spade after your third is likely to win a trick, because once the other players run out of spades, your long ones take over.
A King in hearts, clubs or diamonds is a fair bet if it has one to three other cards of its suit beside it. It wins once that suit's Ace has been played, or if your partner holds the Ace. A lone King, or one in a long suit, rarely wins.
2. Count the tricks your trumps can win
A short suit is worth tricks too, if you have spades to spare. With no diamonds at all and three or more spades, you can trump the first diamond trick that's led, and that's often worth a trick. A suit with just one card is worth about half a trick for the same reason. The hint button counts all of this for you and lists what it counted, which is a good way to learn.
3. Bid as a team
Look at your partner's bid if they've already made it. A high bid from Ben probably means several of the top cards are in Ben's hand, so don't count on winning the same tricks twice. And remember that 13 tricks is all there is: if the four bids add up to well over 13, someone is going to fall short.
4. Lead your Aces early
An Ace of hearts wins the first time hearts are led. By the third time, someone has probably run out of hearts and will trump it with a spade. So when it's your lead and you have an Ace in hearts, clubs or diamonds, play it early while it's still safe.
5. Don't beat your partner
If Ben is already winning a trick, play your lowest card and save the good ones. Two winners on the same trick is a wasted trick. The same goes for trumping: if your partner's card is winning, there's no need to put a spade on it.
6. Low in second place, high in third
When you're second to play, there are still two players to come, so a high card can easily be beaten. Play low unless you hold the highest card left in that suit. When you're last, you can see exactly what you need: win with the lowest card that does the job.
7. Draw out the trumps when you hold the top spades
If you hold the highest spades still in play, leading them pulls the other players' spades out of their hands. After that, your winners in other suits can't be trumped. If you hold low spades and your opponents hold the high ones, do the opposite: let them lead spades.
8. Watch your bags
Once your team has won as many tricks as it bid, stop winning. Play cards that lose, and when you can't follow suit, get rid of your high cards so they can't win later. Ten bags cost 100 points, and in a long game they creep up faster than you'd think. In our test games the computer teams picked up just under one bag per hand each.
9. Bid nil with the right hand
A nil bid suits a hand with no Aces, no high spades, three spades or fewer and nothing above a 9 in spades. Low cards in every suit make it easier still. Then play to lose every trick: play the highest card that's still under the winning one, and when you can't follow suit, throw away your highest cards.
Our computer players only bid nil with hands like that, and their nil bids succeeded about 87 times in 100 in our tests. A nil with a doubtful hand is a gamble: it's 200 points between making it and missing it.
10. Look after a partner who bid nil
When Ben bids nil, your job changes: you want to win the tricks that would otherwise land with Ben. Lead your Aces and high cards, and when Ben's card is winning a trick, beat it if you can. Don't worry too much about bags in that hand. The 100 points for a successful nil are worth far more.
Reading the scoreboard
Near the end of a game, look at both scores before you bid. If you're close to 500 and well ahead, a safe bid that you're sure to make is better than an ambitious one. If you're behind, you may need to bid a little higher, or try a nil, to catch up. And if either team is close to 10 bags, every extra trick matters.
How often should you make your bid?
In our own tests, a team bidding and playing the way the hints suggest made its bid about 86 times in 100, and the two teams won about the same number of games. If your team makes its bid most hands without piling up bags, you're playing very good Spades. If you enjoy trick-taking games, try our Hearts strategy guide too.