Rules of Spades

Note that these rules are mostly copied from the app Spades from AI Factory Limited. The ruleset here is the one that OtterFan48 uses.

In Spades, the first dealer is decided by each player cutting the deck and revealing the top card, with the player revealing the highest ranked card becoming the first dealer. If the ranks are tied, the winner is decided by Bridge's standard suit ranking: ♠️, ♥️, ♦️, ♣️.

After a Hand, the deal passes to the player to the left of the dealer of the previous Hand.

## Overview

Spades is a partnership trick taking game played over a series of Hands, where the ♠️ suit is always trumps. The goal for a partnership is to reach 500 points before their opponents.

The game consists of four players in two partnerships. North and South seats form one partnership, while East and West form the other.

## The Deal

At the start of each Hand, the deck is shuffled by the Dealer and cut by the player on the Dealer's right (to avoid the Dealer stacking the deck). Then 13 cards are dealt face down to each player. Each player can only look at their own cards.

The cards are ranked, from highest to lowest: Ace, King, Queen, Jack, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2.

## Bidding

Starting with the player to the left of the dealer, and proceeding clockwise round the table, each player makes a bid. A bid is the player's chosen target for the number of tricks they hope to make, based on the cards they have and the bids of other players.

This bid can be any value from 0 and 13. A bid of 0 tricks is called a Nil bid and is a special case when it comes to scoring.

Once all bids have been made, the important values are the combined bids from each partnership. The partnership has to make the combined bid, rather that individuals making their individual bids.

The one exception is Nil bids. A Nil bid counts as 0 towards the combined bid for the partnership as usual. However any player who bids Nil, but then wins a trick, receives a 100 point penalty at the end of the Hand.

A special bid called Blind Nil is an option available to any player of a team that is losing by 100 points or more. This bid works like a normal Nil bid, but must be made before viewing their cards, and the bonuses/penalties are double that of a normal Nil bid.

Players that bid Nil or Blind Nil and their partners can pass 1 card between them, to help the Nil bidder get rid of a high ranked card that might cause them to win a trick.

## Playing Tricks

Once the bids are complete, trick playing starts.

A trick consists of each player playing one card in turn onto the table and whoever plays the highest card wins that trick. The four cards are then cleared from the table and placed face down next to the winner in order to track number of tricks won.

The first player to play a card in a trick is called the lead player. Immediately after the bidding, the lead player is the player to the left of the dealer. In future tricks, the lead player is the player who won the previous trick. The lead player in a trick can play any card in their hand, apart from a ♠️ if no ♠️ has been played before (unless the lead player has no cards but ♠️ in their hand). When a ♠️ is eventually played, ♠️ are then said to have been broken, and any player from then on are allowed to lead with a ♠️. The lead player for the first trick **must** lead with their lowest ♣️ if they have one.

Once a card has been led in the trick, play then proceeds clockwise around the table.

The other non-lead players must meet the following rules when playing their card:

* If the player has a card of the same suit to which was led, they **must** play a card of that suit.
* If the player does not have a card of the lead suit, they can play any card, including a ♠️.

## Resolving Trick Winner

Once all players have played a card, and there are four cards on the table, the player with the highest card wins the trick. The winning card is determined as follows:

* If a ♠️ has been played, the highest ranked ♠️ wins the trick.
* If no ♠️ has been played, the highest ranked of the lead suit wins the trick.

Play then proceeds onto the next trick, with the previous trick winner playing the lead card. Once all 13 tricks have been played, and the players have no cards left, the Hand is over and can be scored.

## Basic Scoring

The basic scoring works as follows:

* If a partnership makes at least as many tricks as their combined bid, they score points equal to their combined bid x 10. Then they score 1 point for every over-trick.
* If a partnership fails to make as many tricks as their combined bid, they lose points equal to their combined bid x 10.

## Nil Bid Scoring

On top of the basic scoring above, players also receive either bonuses or penalties if Nil bids were made:

* If an individual player makes a Nil bid and successfully wins 0 tricks, they get a 100 point bonus for the team.
* If an individual player makes a Nil bid, but fails to win exactly 0 tricks, they get a 100 point penalty for the team.

A player that bids Nil does not have their tricks count towards their partner's bid. Therefore the partner of a Nil bid player is on their own, and has to make all of their tricks themselves. If they fail to make the bid, the team gets the regular penalty of failing to make their bid in addition to any bonus or penalty for the separate Nil bid.

Blind Nil bids work in the same way, but the bonus and penalty is 200, instead of 100.

## Bags and Scoring

A tally called Bags is kept for each partnership. This is a tally of the number of over-tricks made on successful bids.

Bags are bad for a partnership and are there to penalise under-bidding. However a points penalty is only applied to the team when the Bags tally reaches or passes 10. At that point the partnership takes a penalty of 100 points, and the number of Bags is reduced by 10.

## End of Game

The game continues with new Hands until at least one partnership reaches or passes 500 points. The first partnership to do this wins the game. If both partnerships do this at the same time, the partnership with the most points wins.