Spades Rules

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These are the rules I use for Spades. I got them from John McLeod's pagat.com, which has rules for pretty much all card games. (C) John McLeod, 2011 - reprinted with permission.

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The teams

The four players are in fixed partnerships, with partners sitting opposite each other. Deal and play are clockwise.

Rank of Cards

A standard pack of 52 cards is used. The cards, in each suit, rank from highest to lowest: A, K, Q, J, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2.

The Deal

The first dealer is chosen at random, and the turn to deal rotates clockwise. The cards are shuffled and then dealt singly, in clockwise order beginning with the player on dealer's left, until all 52 cards have been dealt and everyone has 13.

The Bidding

In Spades, all four players bid a number of tricks. Each team adds together the bids of the two partners, and the total is the number of tricks that team must try to win in order to get a positive score. The bidding begins with the player to dealer's left and continues clockwise around the table. Everyone must bid a number, and in theory any number from 0 to 13 is allowed. Unlike other games with bidding, there is no requirement for each bid to be higher than the last one, and players are not allowed to pass. There is no second round of bidding - bids once made cannot be altered.

Example: South deals; West bids 3; North bids 1; East bids 4; South bids 4. The objective of North and South is to win at least 5 tricks (4+1), East and West try to win at least 7 (4+3).

A bid of 0 tricks is known as Nil. This is a declaration that that the player who bid Nil will not win any tricks during the play. There is an extra bonus for this if it succeeds and a penalty if it fails. The partnership also has the objective of winning the number of tricks bid by the Nil's partner. It is not possible to bid no tricks without bidding a Nil. If you don't want to go for the Nil bonus or penalty you must bid at least 1.

The Play of the Hand

The player to dealer's left leads any card except a spade to the first trick. Each player, in turn, clockwise, must follow suit if able; if unable to follow suit, the player may play any card.

A trick containing a spade is won by the highest spade played; if no spade is played, the trick is won by the highest card of the suit led. The winner of each trick leads to the next. Spades may not be led until either some player has played a spade (on the lead of another suit, of course), or the leader has nothing but spades left in hand.

Playing the first spade is known as 'breaking' spades.

Scoring

A side that takes at least as many tricks as its bid calls for receives a score equal to 10 times its bid. Additional tricks (overtricks) are worth an extra one point each.

Sandbagging rule: Overtricks are colloquially known as bags. A side which (over several deals) accumulates ten or more bags has 100 points deducted from its score. Any bags beyond ten are carried over to the next cycle of ten overtricks - that is if they reached twenty overtricks they would lose another 100 points and so on.

Example: Suppose a team whose score is 337 bids 5 tricks and they have 7 bags carried over from the previous rounds. If they win 7 tricks they score 52, taking their score to 389 (and their bags to 9). If they win 8 tricks they score 53, but lose 100 because they now have 10 bags, and their score becomes 290 (337 + 53 - 100). If they win 9 tricks they score 54 and lose 100, bringing their score to 291.

If a side does not make its bid, they lose 10 points for each trick they bid.

If a bid of nil is successful, the nil bidder's side receives 100 points. This is in addition to the score won (or lost) by the partner of the nil bidder for tricks made. If a bid of nil fails - that is, the bidder takes at least one trick - the bidder's side loses 100 points, but still receives any amount scored for the partner's bid.

When a nil fails, the tricks won by the nil bidder do not count towards making the partner's bid, but do count as bags for the team.

The side which reaches 500 points first wins the game. If both sides reach 500 points in a single deal, the side with the higher score wins.

Hearts Rules

These are the rules I use for Hearts. There are many variations possible, but I use the basic ones from Wikipedia.

The objective of Hearts is to get as few points as possible. Each heart gives one penalty point. There is also one special card, the Queen of spades, which gives 13 penalty points.
When the game starts you select 3 cards to pass to one of your opponents. Typically you want to pass your three worst cards to get rid of them. Which opponent you pass to varies, you start by passing to the opponent on your left, then in the next game you pass to the opponent on your right, third game you pass across the table and in the fourth game there is no card passing.
Each turn starts with one player playing a single card, also called leading. The suit of that card determines the suit of the trick. The other players then play one card each. If they have a card in the same suit as the first card then they must play that. If they don't then they can play one of their other cards. Once four cards have been played, the player who played the highest ranking card in the original suit takes the trick, i.e. he takes the four cards on the table and he then starts the next turn. Any penalty cards in the trick (hearts or queen of spades) are added to the players penalty score. So you want to avoid taking any tricks that have hearts or the queen of spades.
The player who has the two of clubs at the start of the game leads in the first hand, and he MUST lead with the two of clubs.
You cannot lead a trick with hearts, until hearts has been broken (played on another suit). So if it is your turn to lead and no heart has been played yet then you may not select a heart as the card to play first. In some variations of the game you can't play the queen of spades until hearts has been broken as well, but in this version you can always play the queen of spades and she doesn't break hearts.
In the very first round you may never play a heart or the queen of spades, not even if you don't have any card in the suit of the lead card.
Once all cards have been played the penalty points are counted and the player with the fewest points wins that hand. When one or more players reach 100 points or more then the entire game is finished, and the player with the least points win. If points are over 100 and there are two or more equal with the least points then play continues until there's only one winner.
Shooting the Moon! Generally it's bad to get penalty cards, but there is one extra twist! If you get ALL the penalty cards (13 hearts + Queen of spades) then you get 0 points and the other 3 players get 26 points each! This is called Shooting the Moon. Trying this can be a really risky move though, since if another player gets just one of the hearts you'll end up with a lot of points...

As of 21.02.2014 I've changed the game so the Queen of Spades no longer breaks hearts. I used to get complaints that it didn't, then when I changed it to make sure she did break then I got even more complaints about that. So, it looks like most people want the Queen of Spades to not break hearts, so that's the way it'll be from now on. Please do not write to me requesting that I change this again!

About Hearts

Spades For Cash

This online version of the classic card game Hearts was made by me. My name is Einar Egilsson and over there on the left is my current Fa

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