How to play Spades: rules, bidding, bags and nil

What you need

Four players, partners sitting opposite each other, and a standard 52-card pack. In each suit the ace is high. Spades are permanently trumps: any spade beats any card of another suit.

The deal and the bidding

Deal all the cards, thirteen each. Starting with the player on the dealer's left, each player in turn makes one bid: a number of tricks from 0 to 13. There is only one round and you can't pass. Partners' bids are added together to make the side's contract.

A bid of 0 is nil: a promise to win no tricks at all (see below).

Playing a hand

1. The player on the dealer's left leads any card except a spade.
2. Follow suit if you can. If you can't, play anything: a spade to win the trick (to "trump" or "cut" it), or a card you don't want.
3. The trick is won by the highest spade in it, or if there is none, by the highest card of the suit led. The winner leads next.
4. Spades can't be led until a spade has been played on an earlier trick ("spades are broken"), unless the leader has nothing but spades.

Scoring

Play to 500. If both sides pass 500 in the same hand the higher score wins. Many groups also end the game if a side reaches minus 200, and Yuzool does.

Bags

Every trick you win beyond your bid is a bag. Each bag is worth a point, and your side keeps a running count. When the count reaches ten you lose 100 points and the count starts again.

Bags are there to stop safe underbidding. A side that always bids one too few will give back 100 points every few hands.

Bidding nil

A player who bids nil must not win a single trick. If they succeed their side scores 100; if they take even one trick the side loses 100. The partner's bid is scored separately in the usual way, so a nil hand can score both.

If a nil fails, the tricks the nil bidder won do not help their partner's bid, but they do count as bags.

• Good nil hands have low cards in every suit and no more than three small spades.
• Bad nil hands hold the Ace or King of spades, or a lone high card in a short suit.
• The partner's job is to win tricks with high cards, especially in the suits where the nil bidder might be forced to win.

Blind nil (bidding nil before looking at your cards, for 200) is a common house rule. It is not played on Yuzool.

Strategy for beginners

• Count your tricks honestly. An ace is a trick. A king is a trick if you have another card in the suit. Each spade beyond your third is usually a trick. A suit you have none of is worth a trick or two if you have spades to trump with.
• Lead your aces early before someone runs out of the suit and trumps them.
• Second player plays low, third plays high. Don't waste a king on a trick your partner is already winning.
• Watch the table's total. If the four bids add up to 13 or more, somebody will be set: make sure it is not you. If they add up to 10 or fewer, there are bags to dodge.
• Set them when it is cheap. Stopping the other side one trick short costs them ten times their bid.

• Trumping your partner's winning card.
• Bidding nil with the King of spades.
• Taking extra tricks "just in case" when your bid is already safe.