Spades is a card game of skill and teamwork, with an exciting bidding feature. The game was invented in the American Midwest sometime around the late 30s as a variant of Whist, the original trick-taking card game that had already prompted the creation of Bridge, Euchre, and Hearts.
A significant part of the success and popularity of Spade among players is its simplicity compared to other card games of the same family. In fact, it is often used as a precursor to learning more complicated games such as Bridge, as the players can master the heart of the game and simply work on adding additional rules later.
With the online game Spades, you can take your training and enjoyment to another level, by playing for free whenever and wherever you want. Better even, this game has a multiplayer mode that lets you create and join private rooms to play only with friends or other real people.
How to play Spades online
Spades is a 4-player card game, played with a standard 52-card deck. You will team up with the player in front of you and play against the two players at each of your sides.
The Aces are the most valuable cards while the 2 are the weakest. Spades are always the trump and will take over any cards regardless of their value. However, when spades go against spades, the one with the highest ranking wins.
The players must follow the cards' suits whenever possible. The highest ranking card of the trick’s opening suit wins it unless Spades are played. In that case, the most valuable spades card will take it.
The first spades card of the game can only be played if a player cannot follow the suit on the tableau. In this online game, trying to play Spades before will be impossible. In a real-life game, the players will suffer a penalty if they are caught committing this fault.
Bidding and bags
Similarly to Bridge, bidding is a significant part of the reason why Spades can be such an exciting game.
Before each round, the players are asked to point out how many tricks they believe they will get. If they bid 5 and indeed get 5, they will receive 10 points for each (50 in total in this case). If, however, they get fewer tricks than those they bid, 10 points will be deducted from the player's total for every missed trick. For example, if the player bid 5 but only caught 4, then the score will be -10.
When the players catch more tricks than those they bid on, the extra ones will become bags and will be counted next to the team’s score. Each bag is worth 1 point. For instance, if you bid 5 and win 6, your score will be 50+1. When the team reaches a total of 10 bags, 100 points are deducted from their overall score and the bag counting starts again.
The goal is to prevent players from constantly underbidding to avoid taking risks.
Controls
Use the mouse to move the cursor and left-click for selection.
Game developer:
Spades Card Game was developed by AppGeneration.
Last updated: Oct 11, 2023
