Partner Up. Bid Bold. Take Your Tricks.
Spades Has a Seat at The Den.
Spades is a partnership card game built on trust, memory and nerve. Two teams of two face off, each hand starting with a bid and ending with a scorecard. It rewards players who can read a hand, read their partner, and back their bid with the tricks to prove it.
Bid your hand. Trust your partner. Take your tricks.
The Basics
Four Players. Two Partnerships. One Trump Suit.
Spades is a trick-taking game built on partnership. Before a single card is played, the setup already shapes the strategy.
01
Partners & Positions
Two teams. One goal: outbid, outplay, out-trick.
Spades is played with four players seated in two fixed partnerships. Partners sit directly across the table from one another, working toward a single shared score.
You'll always know who's on your side — your partner's bid combines with yours to form the team's contract, and every trick either of you wins counts toward the same total.
4 Players
2 Partnerships
Partners Sit Across
Shared Scoring
02
The Deal & The Trump Suit
Fifty-two cards. Thirteen apiece. Spades rule them all.
A standard 52-card deck is dealt out completely, giving each player thirteen cards. There's no widow, kitty or extra draw — what you're dealt is what you play the entire hand.
The spade suit is always trump, meaning any spade beats any card of another suit, regardless of rank. That single rule shapes nearly every decision at the table.
Know your spades. They decide more hands than aces ever will.
How a Hand Plays Out
Bid. Play. Score.
Every hand of Spades moves through the same three phases — and each one changes what the right decision looks like.
01
The Bidding Phase
Say the number before you see how the hand unfolds.
Starting to the dealer's left, each player looks over their thirteen cards and bids the number of tricks — 0 through 13 — they believe they can win. The two partners' bids are added together to become the team's contract for the hand.
Bidding zero is called a Nil — a high-risk, high-reward wager that you won't take a single trick all hand. An even bolder version, Blind Nil, is bid before a player even looks at their cards.
Bid 0–13 Tricks
Team Bids Combine
Nil = Zero Tricks
The bid is a promise. The play is keeping it.
02
Playing the Tricks
Follow suit, hold your spades, and watch what breaks.
The player to the dealer's left leads the first trick, and play continues clockwise around the table. Every player must follow the suit that was led if they're able to.
A player with nothing in the led suit may play anything — including a spade, which beats every card of the led suit. Spades can't be led, however, until one has already been played on an earlier trick ("breaking spades") — unless the player on lead has nothing but spades left in hand.
Whoever plays the highest card of the suit led wins the trick, unless it was trumped — then the highest spade takes it. The winner of each trick leads the next one.
Must Follow Suit
Spades Always Trump
Highest Card Wins
Thirteen tricks. Thirteen small decisions that add up to the whole hand.
03
Scoring the Hand
Make your bid, bank your points. Miss it, and it costs you.
If a partnership takes at least as many tricks as they bid, they score 10 points for every trick bid, plus a small bonus for each extra trick won beyond the contract — an overtrick known as a bag.
Fall short of the bid, and the team loses 10 points for every trick that was bid, no matter how close they came. A successful Nil earns a flat bonus, commonly 100 points, while a failed Nil costs the team that same amount.
Bags matter beyond the single hand — accumulate too many (traditionally 10) and a penalty, commonly 100 points, is subtracted from the team's total. Hands continue until a partnership crosses the target score, often 500.
10 Pts Per Bid Trick
Bonus Per Bag
10 Bags = Penalty
The safest bid isn't always the best one.
Standard Bid
Bid what you can win
Count your likely tricks — high spades, long suits, strong aces — and bid a number your partner can build around.
Nil
Bid to win nothing at all
Commit to taking zero tricks the entire hand, usually with a weak, low hand that had little chance of winning a trick anyway.
Standard Bid
Tricks add to the team total
Tricks your side takes above the bid still add a small bonus, so bidding accurately — not just high — is what pays off.
Nil
One trick ends the bet
Winning even a single trick breaks the Nil and turns the bonus into a penalty of the same size.
Standard Bid
Built for steady scoring
Reliable bids and consistent tricks are how most partnerships climb toward the target score.
Nil
Built for a big swing
A well-timed Nil can rescue a partnership that's fallen behind — or sink one that isn't ready for it.
New to Spades?
Pull Up a Chair. Grab a Partner.
You don't need a lifetime of card sense to enjoy Spades at The Den. It's a game built on communication, memory and a little bit of nerve — and every strong partnership started with a hand where nobody knew what to bid.
If you're new to the game, ask our team to walk you through a hand before the bidding starts.
And if you already know your way around a trump suit?
Your partner's waiting.
Bags & The Long Game
It's Never Just One Hand.
Spades is a running score, not a single showdown — every hand's bid, every trick won or lost, and every bag collected carries forward to the next. A strong partnership plays the long game: bidding honestly, watching the bag count late, and saving a Nil for the moment it truly counts.
Every Hand Tells a Story
Spades Rewards the Partnership.
The Den brings the table, the cards and the company. Learn the bid. Trust the trump suit. Find your regular four. Stay for another hand.
Your bid. Your partner. Your table.
