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Spades strategy

Bid what your hand can take, not what you hope it might: count aces, kings that have company, and every spade past your third, then add a little for a short suit you can trump. Bid nil only with almost no high cards. Once your team has made its bid, stop winning tricks, because every 10 bags cost 100. And never trump a trick your partner is already winning.

By Emre Özen, updated October 8, 2026. The numbers come from 2,000 games (21,222 hands) between four copies of our strong computer player, plus exact counts over every possible 13-card hand. They describe our computer players, so treat them as a guide, not a law. New to the game? Start with how to play spades.

Count your tricks before you bid

Our strong player bids by adding up what each card is likely to win. It's the same counting most players do in their heads:

Side aces (aces in the side suits: hearts, diamonds and clubs) are about one trick each, a bit less in a suit of six or more, since someone will be out of it and trump.
Side kings count for most of a trick next to the ace, and about half a trick with one to three small cards beside them. A king on its own is close to worthless: it falls under the ace.
High spades: the ace is a sure trick. The king needs one more spade with it and the queen two more.
Long spades: every spade past your third is worth nearly a trick, because once the others run out of spades your small ones win.
Short side suits help when you have spare spades. A void (no cards in a suit) or a singleton (only one card in a suit) lets you trump early.

How close does that get? Rounded to a whole number, the strong player's count matched the tricks it actually took in 38.3% of hands, and was within one trick in 86.7%. Its "sure" tricks (aces, ace-king, the top spades) were even safer: it took at least that many in 99.1% of hands. So the sure tricks are your floor, and the rest of the count is a best guess that's off by one about half the time.

Partners even this out. A single player hit their bid exactly in 38.3% of hands, took more in 40.2% and fewer in 21.6%. Yet teams made their combined bid 82.8% of the time, because one partner's extra trick covers the other's missing one. The most common team bid was 6.

What your spades are worth

Thirteen spades go round four hands, so three or four is normal. The chance of each length is exact; the tricks column is the average our strong player took with that many spades, counting all its tricks, not just spades, and including hands where it bid nil.

Spades in your hand	Chance of being dealt that many	Average tricks taken (nil hands included)
0	1.3%	1.7
1	8.0%	1.88
2	20.6%	2.35
3	28.6%	2.91
4	23.9%	3.71
5	12.5%	4.58
6	4.2%	5.59
7	0.9%	6.6
8	0.1%	7.96

The jump from three to four spades is where length starts to pay. Below that, your spades mostly get used up trumping, or fall under higher ones. You'll be dealt four or more spades 41.5% of the time, no spades at all 1.3% of the time, and a hand with a void in at least one suit 5.1% of the time.

When to bid nil

Nil is worth 100 points either way, so it needs a hand that really can't win a trick. The strong player only bids it when its count is under about two tricks and the hand passes a danger check. Aces count against it, and so do high spades and more than three spades. In each side suit, the lowest card should be a 6 or less, the next an 8 or less, the next a 10 or less, and so on; anything higher counts against it too. It allows one small flaw at most.

That's picky, and it works. Our strong players bid nil in 2.8% of hands and made 87.5% of those nils (2,081 of 2,379). A hand with a lone king or queen in a short suit is the classic trap: it looks weak, but that card has nowhere to hide.

Don't bid nil when your partner already has. Two nils leave nobody to take the tricks.

Covering your partner's nil

When your partner bids nil, your job changes. Win tricks. Lead your aces and other top cards so your partner can drop their high cards under them, and when your partner plays a card that's winning, play over it if you can. If your partner has already played low and is safe, keep your good cards for the next trick.

Dodge bags once your bid is made

Over these games a team picked up 0.8 bags per hand on average, and somebody lost 100 to bags 0.67 times per game. Once your team has its tricks, start ducking: play the highest card that still loses, and lead low cards that others will beat. Each trick you give away is a trick that's a bag for them.

The exception is a set. If the other team still needs tricks and there aren't many left, taking tricks to stop them is worth far more than a bag: a set team loses 10 points for every trick it bid. Our strong player goes for the set when the number of tricks the other team can still afford to lose is no more than the sure winners in its own hand.

Playing the cards

Don't overtake your partner. If your partner's card is already winning and nobody after you can beat it, play your lowest card. Trumping your partner's ace wastes two winners on one trick.
Second hand low, third hand high. Playing second, with your partner still to come, play low. Playing third, after your partner led, play high enough to make the last player use a big card.
Last to play, win cheaply. If you play fourth and need the trick, take it with the smallest card that does.
Lead into your partner's void. When your partner has shown out of a suit (played something else on it), lead that suit and let them trump, as long as the opponents aren't out of it too.
Pull trumps when you hold the top spades. When you hold the highest spade still out, and plenty of others, leading them draws the other side's spades so your side-suit winners stand up.
Count the spades. There are 13. Once you know how many have gone, you know when your small ones are winners.

Does any of this matter?

Our easy computer player does none of it: it bids its aces and kings plus long spades, never bids nil, and plays its highest card whenever it can win the trick, partner or not. Strong partners beat easy partners in 938 of 1,000 games, half with the strong team sitting North and South and half East and West. Between four strong players, games to 500 took 10.61 hands on average, and a game to 300 took 5.89.

Dealing first didn't matter much. The team that dealt the first hand won 992 of 2,000 games between strong players.

Try the habits out: play spades against the computer, and use the Hint button to see which card the strong player would choose and why. For the points side of things, see how spades scoring works.