Spades Tactics and Trickery: Introduction

This book is about the game of Spades as it is played on Playsite.com. Although the Playsite version is not the only way to play, I've found that the Playsite version leads to interesting game play more often than other versions. Differences in versions aside, the concepts found in this book are applicable in any version of Spades. So we really can all just get along.

Within this book I use terms such as "game", "hand", "round", and "trick" consistently, but note that this consistency is rarely practiced in actual game play and discussion. More often than not, players rely on context for terminology meaning.

When providing examples, I will use the following hand notation:


West-East 71 North-South -60


	West (D)	North	East	South

Hand		♠(A)KT832 ♥(K)754 ♣[...] ♦(void)

Bid		hint 5	hint 4	blind nil
Bid	nil

Pass		♠A ♥K		♥3 ♣2

Trick 1		♣T	♣A +++	♣8
Trick 1	♣Q
Trick 2			♦Q	♦J
Trick 2	♦T	?

The first line indicates the current score. At the start of the round in this game, the West-East team has a score of 71, the North-South team has a score of -60.

The top of the chart indicates position. West, North, East, and South are always in the same order. (D) indicates which player is the dealer.

The four rows labeled "Hand" indicate the cards each player holds. In the "Sample Games" chapter, the starting hands for all players are revealed. In other chapters, the hands reflect a player's holding at the time in question. A blank cell indicates an unknown holding. "(void)" means the player is void in that suit. "[...]" means that the cards the player holds in that suit are irrelevant to the analysis. If any cards were passed, the hand reflects holdings after the pass with the passed cards in parentheses.

The row labeled "Bid" indicates the hint or bid each player made in turn.

The row labeled "Pass" indicates the cards that each player passed, in the event of a blind nil.

The bidding and playing action is contained in the grey cells and reads from left to right, top to bottom. In this example, North bid first, followed by the other players. North also led in Trick 1. East led in Trick 2.

The trick-winning card is noted with a triple-plus (+++). On Trick 1, the winning card was the ♣A.

The question mark (?) indicates where the action has stopped and to where the analysis refers. In the above example, the action has stopped at North during Trick 2.