Bid what you have, not what you hope
Count your sure winners first: high spades, and aces in the side suits. Then adjust for shape. A king that is not accompanied by its ace is a maybe, not a winner — it depends on when the ace falls. Two cards in a suit is a short suit, and short suits turn into trump tricks whether you planned them or not.
- A sure spade winner counts as one trick, and so does a side-suit ace.
- A bare king or queen in a side suit counts as half a trick at most.
- A void (no cards at all in a suit) is worth roughly one trick, because your first card of that suit becomes a spade.
- Low spades — the two through ten — win nothing by themselves. They exist to be spent under someone else’s winner.
The scoring asymmetry is the whole game: making the bid pays 10 per trick, missing it costs 10 per trick, and bags cost you eventually. A greedy bid of one extra trick converts a likely 40 into a likely minus 70.
Bags are a bill, not a bonus
New players take every trick they can. Experienced players take exactly the tricks they bid. Every overtrick is a bag, ten bags is minus 100, and against a disciplined team the bags will outlast your lead. When your bid is already made and the remaining tricks are contested, ask one question: can I lose this trick on purpose?
Dumping high cards under a winner — especially risky singles like a bare ace of a side suit — clears future bags before they happen. The reverse skill matters too: when the opponents are near the bag penalty, play your low cards to force them to win tricks they never bid.
Setting the opponents
Making the other team fall short of its bid is worth as much as making your own: they score zero where they hoped for tens, and they lose the full bid value. Setting takes deliberate play.
- Watch the combined enemy bid. A team bidding 10 of 13 tricks needs nearly everything to go right; hold one strong spade back to spoil it.
- Keep control of a side suit. Winning two early tricks with high cards in a suit is worth less than staying home and taking the last trick of that suit later, when it sets the hand.
- Count trumps. If you know six spades have been played and you hold the two highest remaining, the endgame is yours — steer the hand there and take the setting trick at the death.
Playing with a partner
Your bid is a message. Bidding 2 with a strong hand tells your partner you are protecting against bags; bidding 5 signals confidence they can lean on. Once play starts, the discipline is simple: make your own bid first, cover for your partner second, and only then hunt for sets.
Protecting a nil bid deserves special care. Lead through your nil partner’s weaknesses, keep low cards to feed them winners, and remember that their failed nil costs the same 100 points it would have earned. A nil is a partnership project, not a solo gamble.
When to bid nil
The right nil hand has no ace, no king, few spades, and lots of very low cards in every suit. The wrong nil hand is the one you talk yourself into after two bad hands. If your partner has to bend their own play to shield you, a nil can cost the team its own bid — so the honest question is not "can I maybe win nothing?" but "can I certainly win nothing?"
Put the habits to work on Spades — the computer opponents bid and play honestly, which is exactly the pressure the real game applies. For the full rule set, see How to play Spades; for a two-player change of pace, Gin Rummy strategy covers the other kind of counting game.
