Spades

Bid, take your tricks, and dodge the bags — master the classic partnership card game

Spades — the four-player partnership trick-taking game where the spade suit is ALWAYS trump — taught from the ground up. Born in 1930s America and made famous in the military, on college campuses, and across African-American communities, Spades pairs you with a partner across the table in a race to 500 points. This epoch builds you from the deal and the fixed trump suit through bidding tricks, following suit and 'breaking spades', the signature nil bid, blind nil, the punishing bags/sandbag rule, partnership play and supporting a nil, counting trump and setting opponents, and the strategy and house variants (Whiz, Suicide, Mirror, Joker-Joker-Deuce) that separate steady winners from the table. A game of arithmetic, memory, communication, and nerve.