Books and other information
"Win at Spades" by Joe Andrews
As of April 2001, the most popular title on the game of Spades. Andrews has a lot of interesting insight in part due to his encyclopedic knowledge of different card games. I found his illustrative hands to be hard to follow and not particularly useful; they seemed to more often illustrate freak occurences (weird distribution, etc.) than examples of how to play well. Despite that, this book is worth a read.
"How to Not Lose at Spades" by "JohnGalt" Strichman
My general impression is that Strichman is a very good player. However, he chose to use large print and all caps in order to make his book more accessible to the visually impaired, and this has the unfortunate effect of being less accessible to...well, me. I agreed with most of what I read, and didn't strongly disagree with the rest.
"Spades For Winners" by Steve Fleishman
Of the three books I've read, this book is the best. Fleishman (who, I believe, is the webmaster of the Master Spades site, reviewed below) explains concepts clearly and provides many illustrative examples.
ConJelCo Publishing (www.conjelco.com)
Publisher, distributor, and retailer of books on games and gambling.
The Card Games Web Site (www.pagat.com)
Web site dedicated to rules and information about card and tile games from around the world.
Bird's Spades Tips and Strategies (www.zspades.com)
Good tips from a dedicated Spades player. Runs a mailing list on Spades.
Master Spades (masterspades.home.att.net)
Another site offering very good spades advice. Has a mailing list and a forum. You can submit hands to be discussed and analyzed.
Poker on Usenet (rec.gambling.poker)
Two Plus Two Poker Forums (www.twoplustwo.com)
Stanford Wong's Blackjack Forums (www.bj21.com)
Learning about poker and blackjack would benefit any serious spades player. Most spades players I've encountered don't have the first clue what odds and probability really are, much less how to calculate and apply them. The URLs listed above are some of the best places to learn about gambling.
Hyperionics (www.hyperionics.com)
Home page for Hypercam, the screen capture software I used to record and transcribe the games in this book.
Online games sites
Playsite (www.playsite.com)
Pogo (www.pogo.com)
The Zone (www.zone.com)
Hasbro Games (www.games.com)
Flipside (www.flipside.com/games/)
Yahoo Games (games.yahoo.com)
