The short, practical version — written for people using this app to score their game.
Spades is an American partnership trick-taking game that emerged in the late 1930s, descended from older Whist-family games like Bid Whist and Auction Bridge. It spread quickly through college campuses and the U.S. military during World War II, and by the 1950s had become one of the most-played social card games in the country. The modern partnership-with-bidding format is essentially unchanged from that era — what's evolved is the scoring (bags and nil came later) and the conventions around how partners signal through their bids.
500, but you can pick 250, 300, or any custom number on the setup screen.If your team bid 4 and took 5 tricks, you get 40 + 1 = 41 points, and you pick up 1 bag.
Bid 4, take 3, you lose 40. You don't get bags when you're set — you just take the hit.
Every extra trick beyond your bid is a bag. Bags count +1 each, but they build up. The moment your running bag total hits 10, the app deducts 100 points and resets the bag counter.
This is why over-bidding a little is safer than under-bidding a lot — sandbagging stings eventually.
A player can declare nil — a promise to take zero tricks. Tap the nil option on their side of the bid screen. Their partner still bids and plays normally. Nil is scored on top of the team's regular bid result.
Declare nil before looking at your hand. Double reward, double risk. Mostly used when a team is way behind and needs a swing.
First team to reach or exceed the target score wins. If both teams cross the line in the same round, the higher score wins. The app shows the winner on the final screen along with a rematch button.
Bidding well is most of the game. Played badly, every other skill stops mattering. Here's how experienced players actually evaluate a hand:
Aces almost always win. Kings usually win if you also have one or two more cards in that suit to protect them (a singleton King gets crushed under an opponent's Ace). Start your count there.
Every spade above the Ten is likely a winner. Low spades are winners after the high spades and aces are gone — count them when your hand is spade-heavy.
If you have zero or one card in a non-spade suit, you'll be trumping that suit early. A void (zero cards) is worth roughly one extra trick; a singleton is worth a half-trick on average. Bid accordingly.
Five hearts headed by the Queen is not five tricks. After the Ace and King fall (usually held by opponents), your Queen probably gets trumped. Long weak suits aren't bid material — they're survival material.
You can't signal specific cards, but bidding is a language. A bid of 4 or more says "I'm strong, you can bid normally." A bid of 1 says "I have very little — carry me." A bid of 0 or nil says "I have no real tricks." Calibrate your own bid to what your partner just told you.
Nil is a promise to take zero tricks. It works when you have no Aces, no protected Kings, no spades above the Eight, and no short side suit (because being void means you'll trump in). The classic nil hand is a bunch of low cards spread across the four suits with a few middle spades — boring but safe.
Don't go nil with the Ace of Spades, a singleton in any suit, or a long spade suit. And don't nil when your team is already winning by 200+ — the +100 reward isn't worth the −100 risk when you're already cruising.
Spades has dozens of house-rule variations. The app's scoring handles the standard rules, but if your group plays differently, here's a glossary of what you might hear at the table:
Once you've scored your first round, the app shows a rotating strategy tip below the scoreboard. The tips are picked based on what's happening in your game: if your team is at 8 bags, you'll see the bag-warning tip; if someone bid nil, you'll see nil-related advice; if it's a tight endgame, you'll see endgame tips. It's not random — it's reading the state of your match.
If you'd rather play without tips, there's an On / Off toggle on the setup screen. Your choice persists between games.
You're set if your team's combined trick count is less than your bid. Taking 13 tricks always meets any bid up to 13, so that's never a set. But if you bid 10 and took 8, that's a set — overshooting on tricks isn't possible, undershooting is.
No. Bidding 0 as your team bid means neither partner declared nil — you're just saying "we don't expect to take any tricks." If you take some anyway, they're all bags (no points, but bag penalty exposure). Nil is declared separately by an individual player and is worth ±100 on top of the team's regular score.
The team with the higher score wins. The app handles this automatically and shows the winner on the gameover screen. If somehow the scores are tied at or above the target, the game continues — but that's vanishingly rare.
The moment the running bag counter reaches 10, your team loses 100 points and the counter resets to 0 (so 11 bags = −100 plus 1 carry-over, 12 = −100 plus 2, etc.). The bag display below each team's score shows the current count.
Yes — there's an "Undo last" button on the playing screen. It rolls back the most recent round's score, bags, and bag penalties. Use it if you entered the wrong tricks.
Yes. Once the page has loaded once, the app runs entirely in your browser. No server calls during play, no account needed. You can "Add to Home Screen" on iOS or Android for an app-like experience.