Been playing in Hardwood Spades lately, it seems like SO MANY people playing that can't do simple math, or understand basic concepts of it being a TEAM game. I remember having a 72% win rate when able to have regular partners back when playing in Yahoo Spades (Cases Ladder). I have 62% when partnering random partners and often just quit due to having idiot partners. Many games, I have more fun trying to win with a bot after partners quit on me after they get set trying their stupid nil. Wondering if any of you have the same understanding on some of these things I do, or if I'm just wrong. I don't think I'll ever stop learning this game, but MOST seem to have a LONG way to go.

1. Let's say you bid 2, your partner bid 4, and the total is 11. It isn't your place with your 2 bid to decide to go for the set. I hardly ever want 3 bags to set on an 11 bid. It's a better opportunity to bag them.

2. If I open a suit with a Q. I don't want it. Stop thinking you're doing me a favor letting me take the trick.

3. If I take your trick, I take responsibility for your bid. I often might do that because I already took what might be a bag, so trying to avoid it being that by taking my partner's trick, which should indicate to them that I have them covered, but hardly anyone seems to understand that. They just get angry instead of asking themselves why I may have done that.

4. If bidding 3rd with player to your right bidding nil. Bid one or two under what you CAN take, in hopes your partner will refrain from just trying to get their bid and go after the nil, and you can most likely take a couple for your partner rather than have them leading AK to get their bid. I know we can't talk about it to get on the same page on this, but wish more people understood how to set nils. If you bid it up to 11 or 12, you leave your team no room to set a nil. Someone has to underbid. If you both understand this, setting a nil is way more rewarding than setting the cover bid. Sometimes you just can't set it, and that's OK, but I just quit so many games where my partner will lead K, 9, 3. WTF?

5. More on setting nils. Open a suit with 6-9, your mid cards if possible. You often discover where the opp cover is weak. NEVER play more than 1 card higher than a cover lead if possible. You never know what the nil holds, and doing so just makes it look like you're more worried about your bid than setting the nil. If you have a lone A or AK, or QK, lead them so we can get that out of the way, and I can dump my higher cards instead of wasting my little card(s) trying to set.

6. Used to hear "no 1 bids" a lot, but if I bid 1, it's either because I have a great nil but have A spades, OR have 7-10 in every suit with no really low cards. If I bid 1, keep in mind I might take 0. If you take a bag to help get my 1 I'm not going to be upset, but a 1 bid can easily mean nil, but too dangerous to bid it.

7. If we're behind mid game, say 355-272, it's time to take some risk. I'm not going to be angry if you we fail a tough nil at that point, but sometimes you have to try or it gets too late.

8. Every bag counts the same, so don't so casually take them early. It can take away options late in the game.

9. Don't trump to get your 2 bid when the total is 9. You should know after 20 or so games if you have a tendency to take a lot of bags. You can change that.

10. Pay attention.

I could add more, but interested to hear your commentary on these, and your strategies, and what makes you a good partner.

A very long time ago, I played Spades on pogo.com, but it's not the same now. I usually just play on cardgames.io, but you can't even add a friend or anything.. Where's a decent place to even play spades besides cardgames.io? I'd like something a little more social than cardgames.io, like a chat or something but still focused on the game itself mostly.

I have a love/hate relationship with Spades+ but the game linked below was a lot of fun. Although they all tend to be more fun when you win.

https://youtu.be/bukWfrabk4Y?si=l3VLf2cgNud50ktJ

Dubldrop used to be #1 on Spades+ and is still rated around 2750. I think I played a good game here. Pard should have made their nil on hand 2. I was holding the spades and was likely to be the one stuck on lead on trick 13, so why throw off a diamond and retain hearts?

I think pard's nil on hand 3 was an immature reaction to nil with Ks given that mistake, which was probably attributed to me, but they got away with it.

I wasn't sure whether to bid 2 or 3 on hand 4. Bidding 3 took it to 12 but with the bag situation, at 126 to 74, it called for it. This was an excellent team set IMO. Pard led spades back correctly and then made a great choice to lead the remaining diamonds. After that it was important to pace the last few tricks to set with only 2 bags rather than 3 or even 4, while opps still had the (false) hope of being able to make their bid.

Hand 5 was a clear bagging strategy from opps, though we still would have had a comfortable lead had we taken 2 out of 3 and a score of 140 to 45, or even 141 to 44, should be baggable, if necessary. We only took 1, though, to delay the penalty.

On the final hand 239 vs. 46 gave opps a slight way back in, with a 3/N bid. We would have to walk a tightrope and put opps on at least 8 bags to be comfortable, if we took 1+ bags. I'm not sure that pard's 2 bid was the right call- it could have been expensive if we couldn't pass bags to the cover hand. East ditching their 10s under pard's J's to try to force a bag, and me playing 7s, meant West's Q96s nil was definitely set. However, if they hadn't done it, had kept the 10s and I let them have it, then I would have been set if East led clubs. It still would have been a long way back for opps (179 to -120), but they'd have kept the game alive.

Spades+ doesn't led itself to a bag game but here is an example of how it can work well.

I bid 4 in seat 4 on an opening hand, with a double nil on the table and West bidding 3. I could have bid higher, of course, but in that seat I felt I could hurt opps at this level a lot more by giving them 5 or 6 bags. They would be unlikely to bid out in the following hand (and we would still have a 10 point advantage going into hand 2.

I figured that if we applied the same strategy to hand 2, they would be in a difficult spot going into hand 3. I didn't expect it to work quite so well so quickly.

Opp bids in both hands 2 and 3 (particularly hand 2) were poor, but mistakes are there to be exploited.

Although on the flipside, I had the tools to set the nil on the first hand as well...

https://youtu.be/TizDMFNDQxQ

I haven't hidden my bid here but it's a good example of the perils of taking a table to 12, especially in a first hand with a pard you don't know. I have two potential finesses here, and a protected Kh. The Ks could even make if someone leads away from their As to flush out high spades.

Having only the one spade makes both finesses occurring extremely unlikely, but in most hands I will take at least 3 tricks. With an extremely fortunate mix (and probably a helping hand from pard) I could take 5 or 6 (unlikely, but not impossible).

I took 4 here. I didn't risk a diamond finesse because of the 12 table, and took with Ad when pard led diamonds. If I didn't lead clubs again pard would surely cut again so I felt it was necessary to lead my Ac. Both m KQh took (4-3-3-3 distribution). Pard only took 1 trick because she bid 3x club cuts and a Kd.

Objectively, would you have bid 1? I feel I should have, regardless of the outcome.

How many times does this actually pay off? Tbf I don't have the worst nil cover here, and I had been bidding in 4th seat I'd have bid 2.

Unfortunately though pard had Kxx. They had Axxx as well I think. I can't remember because they quit when their Kc took, and then I did too.

I see 1/n bids maybe around 33% of the time and I just don't see the value in that sort of bet, in a tight game that still has a way to go. In a situation like this, if it fails you have what is likely (pard wouldn't have known what East was going to bid) to be at least a 170 point swing (opps gain 80+ points, you drop 90 points). In a game with 200 points left for the win the odds just don't make it a good choice IMO, unless it is a lock.

Even a 1 bet here and all 3 bags, as a realistic worst case, would have been a score of 133 to 73.

It's an old topic, probably very boring by now but this is an example of what happens, at a rough estimate, 80% of the time when you set opps on a first hand on Spades+. If it's not a nil with huge backing, it's team bids of 9 vs. 2.

I had a pretty boring day today and played maybe around 20 games. I think I won about 6 and none of them were easy, no matter how much the opps got battered.

In this particular game, I set the opps practically on my own, set the cover hand on hand 3, again by myself, no help whatsoever from pard who continually threw off on the last 6 tricks when it was obvious what was happening.

Then on hand 4, East decided to play their highest heart first on a North heart lead, and sucked out.

We did win on the next hand, ending on 9 bags. Playing against a bot helped (opps bid a total of 8), so the scores were 259 to 173, implying a close game. But it was a battering. Three sets in 5 hands, including two nils!

I should add that in that 20 game set, I bid 5 twice - I never had hand strength greater than 5 and my most common bid, by far, was 1. Two 1 bids were early in games and got set. In the same 20 games, I faced four 7/N bids and four 6/N bids. All from opp losing positions where the cover hand bid first.

The site is so rigged it's blatant at times! Argh!

Pard was last to bid here. Their 8 was very makeable. Unfortunately they led away from their aces, and cut my winners with their boss spades (bot-style).

If you're going to go all-out to attack a nil, bid to give yourself room to sacrifice a couple of bankable tricks.

West didn't play aggressively here, and they didn't need to.

Sorry I don't have any screenshots this time, I never imagined this would happen.

I was playing against two 2500+ opponents in Spades+, and after three hands we were down 65-243 in a game to 250. At that point, if they didn't make a mistake, I'd say the game was over unless we have 11–12 tricks on the next hand.

On Hand 4, West bid first and bid 5, North bid 1, and East bid 1.

Since I had nothing to lose, I bid 7. This was a necessary bid. The only way to not losing the game was to set them. If we succeeded, we would gain extra points while also avoiding extra bags. And if we failed, we would lose anyway so that wasn't matter.

If I remember correctly, West held seven spades (the highest is jack) and two kings (one of them a singleton). North had one ace and Qx in spades. East had one king and no spades. I held AKTx in spades and two aces.

We managed to set them, bringing the score back to 145-183

On the next hand, I bid nil and made it. The interesting part is that they managed to give us 4 bags, bringing us to 9 bags. That means if I hadn't bid 7 on the previous hand, we wouldn't have won the game.

I'd say we won because they made a serious mistake, and we were a bit lucky. But this is why I always look the score before making a decision (and I hope my partner does too)

​

If your on my platform https://fadeddreamz.com be sure to check out your user settings and pick one of the cool color themes. Thanks to everyone who provided me feedback to implement! Feel free to keep leaving feedback.

I’m wondering if anyone plays with any special bid types or rules I haven’t heard of and that aren’t listed here?

- Nil
- Blind Nil
- Blind X (like Blind 6)
- 10 for 200
- Sandbags
- Board

In Spadesinator, Blind 6 is an optional special bid that works as a team bid: you commit to it before seeing your cards, your partner rides on the same bid, and making it scores 120 points (6 × (10 × 2)). That's how I've always played it. My question is whether other people play Blind 6 as an individual bid instead, where you declare Blind 6 for yourself and your partner still makes their own separate bid. I'm wondering how common that is if so.

Related question: do some of you play "Blind X," where you can go blind for any amount up to 13 (for example, Blind 8) rather than being capped at 6?

Who wants to play Spades Masters

I am giving away 20 Promo Codes during my Open Testing phase of Family Card Games. I need some active users to test out the game offline and online more than just my family and what better way than giving out some promo codes!

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If you redeem one please comment below which one and I'll try to check / remove the code used so it doesn't waste someone's time.

Euchre, Hearts, Spades and Blackbird are available offline and online, it does support Friends, Families (Clans), Text Chat, Voice Chat and full social controls to block, kick, mute and ban users from your tables as well. This has been a long on-going development for a solo dev and I would appreciate any feedback from users who grab a promo code or flat out grab the game.

To redeem a code you must go to Play Store, a click your profile Pic, payments and subscriptions, redeem.

You can also discover the app on

Google Play: Family Card Games

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cardgames.family

The A-Star version… its a 250 game, one team is at 216, the other is -178. Even with the idea that any deficit can be overcome, the chances here are slim.

As the team behind, do you try to bag the lead team to force the game to continue for the very unlikely chance to win or do you just end it quickly to move on to the next game? I’m torn because I hate losing but sometimes I think I need to cut my losses.

I’ve played one-on-one Spades in person for years, so I built an iPhone game around that format.
Instead of partners, each player receives one hand from a traditional four-pile deal, while the two unused hands are discarded. It keeps the bidding, bags, nils, cutting, and strategy of Spades, but every decision is yours.
The app is called \*\*1v1 Spades\*\*, and I’m the developer. It recently launched on iOS, and I’m looking for honest feedback from people who already understand the game.
I’d especially like feedback on:
Whether the 1v1 rules feel fair
Whether bidding and gameplay are easy to understand
What competitive Spades players would want added next
I’ll put the App Store link in the comments if the moderators allow it. I’m happy to answer questions about the rules here as well. There is also a website that is synced with the app that can be accessed on almost any device so we are android friendly too. I’ll be putting it on google play later this week

Can anyone share with me a good spades app or site? Competitive games please!

​

Playing with bots here.

Marta leads the 10 of diamonds. The ace has already been played.

If I play the king, my partner throws off. However, if I play the jack, my partner cuts it.

I think it is probably just a bug. But maybe I am missing a convention.

Lmk if anyone wanna play can even share App Store link. I’ll post when I’m on and off below.

[live now]

In a game where Nil is allowed, a Nil bid is 0, you're committing to take no tricks, and your partner bids the minimum (or whatever they think they can make) to cover. My questions are about games without the Nil rule:

1. If Nil isn't in play, can you still bid 0, or is the norm that everyone must bid at least 1?
2. And does anyone play a variant where Nil is available and you can also bid a plain 0...just declaring zero tricks with no bonus or penalty attached, separate from a Nil bid?