Spades is a classic American card game of skill and team work. Spades Master lets you play live games with your friends and chat during the game. Join a friend and play together as a team against other pairs, or challenge everyone in individual or cut-throat mode. You can setup private games or practice your skills against the Artificial Intelligence.

Usually the game is played by 4 players. Opposite players are teamed together and the objective of the game, taking tricks, is their joint effort. The game is won when either team hits a pre-defined mark, usually 250 points. The game itself is divided to matches, beginning with an equal deal of the entire deck to the participants, then each play places a bid – announcing how many tricks he believes to win in that match. When the match is over, a new one is begun until the pre-defined mark is achieved by either group. If a tie sets both teams beyond the marker, another match will be played to determine the winning pair.

Spades is a 52 card deck trick-taking game. A trick is a segment of the game at which time each player plays his card out of the ones in his hand. The most valuable card will win the round and the cards in the center of the table – the trick – will be claimed by the winner.

The spades suit is considered a trump suit. When there is a spade on the table, it will win the trick. If there are more spades on the table, the highest value spade will win the trick. The cards value ranges from 2 (lowest) to 10 followed by the Jack, Queen, King and Ace (highest).

Prior to the game-play itself, the cards are dealt evenly – 13 cards to each player. The dealer is chosen randomly (in real life games, by a high card draw) and the dealer begins dealing the entire deck, cards face down, with the player to his left. We spared you the process with our Random Cards Generator, a machine AI that has been tested over and over to ensure a statistically proved shuffling and dealing of cards to the game players.

The game creator will always play first in the first match and on subsequent matches the first to play will change in a clockwise rotation. The first card to be played can be any card except for any card belonging to the spades suit. The trick winner will be the first to play in the following trick, and so the match continues until all the cards have been played.

The first dealt card's suit determines of which suit the trick must be played. That first card is known as a leading card or "Leader". I.e. If Danny is the game creator, than he plays first. He drops a King of Hearts on the table, so all the other players must follow suit and play Hearts suit cards. If a player has no cards from that suit he may play any suit. If its not a trump then the card would lose the trick even if the face value is higher than the suited leader. The first time a spade can be played as a leading card is when the player has no other suit to play with or someone else has broken spades already. You may break spades when you don't have a card from the lead's suit. E.g. following Danny's King of Hearts, Manny plays a 5 of hearts, but Lenny has no Hearts cards in his hand, and decides to use a Spade card to win the trick, placing in mid-table the 2 of Spades. After the trick in which Spades were "broken", spades can be played as the leading card in the trick.

Before each match commences, ensues the bid. Each player decides, based on the cards he was dealt with, how many tricks he intends to win in the match. Each player places his bid at the beginning of the match. Each trick he claims is worth 10 points until he reaches a number of tricks equal to his bid.

Any trick claimed beyond the bid is referred to as a Bag, and is worth 1 point. When 10 bags are accumulated a penalty of 100 points is deducted from the player's score.

In partnership games the score is mutual so the penalty is for the team's score.

If the bid was missed ("breaking contract" in Spades lingo) then the bid times minus ten points (-10) is added to the score.

In partnership games, each player makes his own individual bid, but the match bid is their combined estimate. I.e. Danny bids 5 tricks while Manny bids for 4 tricks, then their combined effort in the match must be 9 tricks.

If the team's bid is not met while a player has achieved his personal bid, any excess trick he wins is not considered a bag until the team bid is achieved.

This means two more things. The first states that bags are accumulated in a joint "effort" as well. The second is that you might find yourself and your team mate bidding a higher number of tricks than there are to be won (a team bid of over 13!).

When the team breaks contract, the penalty is their combined bid times -10 (tough).

Regarding Bidding, there is another option to bid and that is bid 0 tricks, known as bid "nil". If a player bids nil he must not take any tricks in that match. His effort is solitary and the other player will play his bid as if he's a team by himself for that match (all the rules above apply to him as usual). Taking tricks after bidding nil is regarded as breaking contract and the penalty is -100 points to the team score and the won trick is considered a bag (1 point).

Winning a bid nil (taking no trick throughout the match) rewards with 100 points. I.e. in their next match, Danny bids 3 and Manny bids nil. After the match is over they find out that Danny won two tricks – breaking his contract - and Manny won no tricks at all, keeping his contract. Together they accumulate 70 points, 100 for Manny's contract of nil and -30 for Danny's flop.

Spades is a trick-taking card game, played with a 52 card deck, born and raised in the USA in the beginning of the 20th century. In a way, the game reminds other card trick games like Hearts, but probably owes its ancestry to Bridge more than any other game. According to noted Bridge author George Coffin, the game of Spades was introduced in Cincinnati, Ohio (USA) sometime between 1937 and 1939.