Spades Strategy: 9 Tips for Bidding, Nil and Bags

Good Spades strategy comes down to three habits: count your tricks honestly before you bid, play to your team’s bid instead of your own glory, and never forget your partner. Get those right and you’ll make more bids, set more opponents and take fewer bags.

The tips below fit the standard rules: partners sit across from each other, spades are always trump, and the first team to 500 wins. You can try every one of them in Spades on HulaGames, free in your browser, with June as your partner against Deacon and Vera.

1. Count sure tricks before anything else

Start with the cards that win on their own: aces in side suits, the ace and king of spades, and a king that has at least one small card beside it. A side-suit king alone is a coin flip, since the ace is still out there. Count those first and write the number down in your head.

Then add the extras. A long spade suit (five or more) usually earns one more trick late in the hand. A void or a single card in a side suit lets you trump that suit once it’s led, if you still hold small spades.

2. When in doubt, bid one less

A missed bid costs your team ten points for every trick bid. One extra trick costs one point now, plus a bag. That’s why most good players bid the lower of two numbers. Your partner will often fill the gap, since they’re counting too.

The exception is late in a match, when the other team is close to 500. Then a safe bid can lose you the game, so bid what the hand can really take.

3. Read your partner’s bid

Your bid and your partner’s add up to the team’s bid. If your partner bids high, your job is to protect their winners: don’t take a trick they’re already winning. If they bid low, the tricks are on you, so play your sure winners early.

June plays the same way on HulaGames: she won’t take a trick you’re already winning unless she has to follow suit or it’s the only way to save the team’s bid.

4. Lead from your strong side suits

Early in the hand, lead the ace of a side suit and take the trick before someone runs out of that suit and trumps it. After the ace, a king can follow, but the third round of a suit is often trumped, so think before you lead it.

Avoid leading a suit where you hold the king but not the ace. Let someone else lead it, so your king can win after the ace has been played.

5. Save your low spades for trumping

A small spade is worth more than it looks. Once a side suit runs out in your hand, that two of spades can win a trick against an ace. Don’t throw low spades away when you can’t follow suit early; discard a useless side card instead.

6. Bid Nil with the right hand

A Nil scores +100 if you take no tricks at all, and −100 if you take even one. Good Nil hands have:

• no ace or king of spades;
• three spades or fewer, all low;
• short side suits with only low cards, or a void.

Long suits of middle cards are the danger. Late in the hand, when everyone else is out of that suit, you may have to win with your seven. On HulaGames, today’s Daily, Nil Night, deals everyone the same hand that can make a Nil, so it’s a fair place to practice.

7. Cover your partner’s Nil

When your partner bids Nil, your bid matters less than their zero. Play high in the suits where they’re short, so your card wins the trick before theirs has to. If a trick is already safe for them, stay low and save your high cards for the next danger.

Remember that a Nil bidder’s tricks don’t count toward the team’s bid, so the whole team bid is yours to make.

8. Set the other team when you can

If the other team bids high and you can see they’re struggling, take tricks from them even if it means a bag or two. Making them miss their bid costs them ten points per trick bid, which usually beats the cost of a bag for you.

9. Watch your bag count

Every trick over your bid is a bag. One point each, but every 10 bags cost your team 100 points, so a careless team can lose a match to its own bags. When your team’s bid is already made, stop winning tricks you don’t need: duck under the winning card and let it go.

On HulaGames those bags aren’t wasted. Each one also drops a pebble in the week’s Bag Bank jar, and a new jar starts every Monday, so a bag-heavy week still shows up somewhere.

Practice at the right table

Spades on HulaGames has three tables: Casual for your first games, Sharp for an even match and Shark when you want a real fight. The first three hands are a short tutorial that suggests your bid and explains why. Then play a Quick Match to 500, or a single hand, and try today’s Nil Night.

Play Spades free, with no download and no account needed to start. Prefer to dodge tricks instead of winning them? Try our Hearts strategy tips.

Looking for another card game? See the best free card games on HulaGames.