Spades is a four-player partnership trick-taking card game. You and the player across from you form a team against the other two. Each round starts with a bid — predict how many tricks your team will win. Make it for 10 points per trick; fall short and you lose 10 per bid. First team to 500 wins. Free in your browser, no sign-up.
Goal: bid accurately, take your tricks, and reach 500 points before the other team.
Three AI difficulty levels (easy, medium, hard) from the menu. The hard AI bids with hand-strength heuristics, tracks bags, covers partner Nils, and avoids handing tricks back when their team is already over-bid. Install it as an app from your browser menu to play offline.
Spades was developed in the United States in the late 1930s, almost certainly out of Whist and Bid Whist. It spread through U.S. college campuses and military bases during World War II and the 1950s, then onto Microsoft Windows in Microsoft Plus! 98 and Windows XP, where it became most players' introduction to the game.
For the complete rules, including the bidding table, what bags really cost and when a Nil bid is worth the risk, read the full Spades rules guide.
A bid of 0 — you predict your team will win zero tricks from your hand. Make it and your team scores +100. Take even one trick and the bid fails for -100. Your partner's bid still has to be made separately. Nil is the highest-variance play in Spades; pick it only when you have no Aces and only low spades.
Each overtrick scores 1 point on its own, but every 10 your team accumulates costs you 100 points. The penalty exists to discourage low-balling — bidding 1 and winning 4 would be too cheap. The bag rule pushes teams to bid honestly and not over-deliver.
Only after spades have been broken — meaning a spade has already been played as trump on an earlier trick (because the leader played a non-spade and someone else was void in that suit). If spades are all you have left, you may lead them; that also counts as breaking.
The game ends and your team loses. Spades has both a win line (500) and a loss line (-200). A string of failed bids, missed Nils, and bag penalties can push you there; aggressive Nils early when you're behind are the fastest way to dig the hole deeper.