40 Fun Facts About Spades (Card Game)

During which war did Spades first become popular, carried from camp to camp by American soldiers?

World War II made Spades a barracks favourite, because a hand could be dropped and picked up again far more easily than a hand of poker.

Which tax explains why the ace of spades became the most ornate card in English playing-card decks?

Stamp duty was extended to playing cards in 1711, and the ace of spades was the card stamped to prove it had been paid, later printed by the tax office itself.

Which slang word do Spades players use for overtricks, which bring a penalty once ten pile up?

Bags is short for sandbags, and each one is worth a single point when it is won, which makes the penalty waiting down the line easy to forget.

A Spades player who bids nil is promising to do what for the whole of that hand?

Lose every trick is the whole contract of a nil bid: succeed and the team banks a big bonus, but taking even one trick turns that bonus into a penalty of the same size.

What score do most Spades games use as the winning target, though short games often stop lower?

500 points is the usual finish line, and when both sides cross it on the same deal the side with the higher total takes the game.

The Spades rule against leading a spade too early is borrowed from which other card game?

Hearts players know the idea from their own penalty suit: in Spades, nobody may lead a spade until one has been played on another suit or the leader holds nothing else.

Spades descends from which family of trick-taking games, named after an old English favourite?

Whist filled English card tables in the 18th and 19th centuries, and Spades stands apart from its relatives mainly because nobody bids for the trump suit: it never changes.

Which word do many Spades players use instead of 'tricks' when counting what a team has won?

Books is the everyday word at many tables, and under New York City rules partners openly tell each other how many they expect before agreeing a bid.

Spades is often called a simplified version of which partnership game, famous for its dummy hand?

Bridge adds a changing trump suit, an auction and the dummy hand, so a skilled Spades player can pick up the older game fairly quickly.

In partnership Spades, how do two partners' separate bids become the contract their team must meet?

They are added up into one team target, so a partner who falls short can be rescued by the other taking extra tricks.

In standard Spades, who bids first and later plays the opening card of the hand?

The seat left of the dealer opens both the bidding and the play, which leaves the dealer to bid last, knowing what everyone else has promised.

How much is each bid trick worth to a Spades team that makes its contract?

10 points per bid trick is the backbone of Spades scoring, so a bid of five that comes home scores fifty, while each extra trick adds only a single point.

What happens to a Spades team's score once it has piled up ten overtricks across several hands?

It falls 100 points, a rule aimed at teams that underbid on purpose, so the safest plan is to bid what a hand is really worth.

Compared with an ordinary nil, what is a successful blind nil worth in standard Spades scoring?

Twice as much is the standard reward, and the standard risk too: a blind nil that fails costs double what a failed ordinary nil would.

What do Spades players call the moment the first spade of a hand is played on another suit?

Breaking spades matters because, until it happens, nobody may lead the trump suit unless spades are all they have left.

What is the offence called when a Spades player holds the suit led but plays a different one?

Reneging often goes unnoticed until later in the hand, which is why played tricks may be turned back over only to settle that kind of dispute.

A Spades team that fails to win as many tricks as it bid is said to be what?

Set is the word, and opponents often chase it on purpose, grabbing tricks they do not need just to push the other side below its bid.

In four-player partnership Spades, where does each player's partner sit at the table?

Directly opposite is the rule, so every player has an opponent on each side and the turn to play always alternates between the two teams.

In Spades played with a 54-card deck, which card outranks every other trump?

Big joker is the top trump, and when the two jokers in a pack look alike players simply write the word BIG on one of them.

If nobody plays a spade to a trick in Spades, what wins that trick?

The highest card of the suit led takes it, which is why even the lowest spade is powerful: played on another suit, it beats an ace.

Which word describes a Spades hand that holds no cards at all in one of the four suits?

Void is the word, and it is a weapon in Spades, because a player with none of the suit led is free to win the trick with a trump.

What do card players call the small pile of leftover cards put aside in some versions of Spades?

A kitty appears when the cards will not divide evenly, and one player picks it up before the bidding, then throws away the same number of cards.

Under a common house rule, what may a Spades player declare when dealt a hand with no spades?

A misdeal sends the cards back to the same dealer for a fresh shuffle, though a bold player might keep the spadeless hand and try for nil instead.

Which nickname is given to Spades played with no partnerships, every player bidding alone?

Cutthroat Spades makes nil far harder to bring home, because nobody at the table will take the tricks a nil bidder is trying to dodge.

On a standard Spades scoresheet, which part of a team's total shows the overtricks it has collected?

The last digit does the counting, since every overtrick adds a single point to the total, so no separate tally is needed.

Which term describes throwing away a worthless card when a Spades player cannot follow the suit led?

Sloughing, also spelled sluffing, simply means discarding: the card thrown has no chance of winning the trick.

What is it called when a Spades partner plays high to shield a nil bidder from taking a trick?

Covering is the partner's whole job on a nil hand, which is why some tables let the pair swap a card or two before play begins.

Two-player Spades has no deal, so how do the players build their hands instead?

Drawing from a stock, each player looks at the top card and either keeps it and discards the next, or rejects it and keeps the next.

What do Spades players call the rare feat of one team winning every single trick in a hand?

A Boston earns bragging rights at any table, and under some house rules a team that bids one and brings it home wins the game outright.

Which nickname for a ten-trick Spades bid comes from the linked zeros drawn on the scoresheet?

Wheels are the two zeros of the 200-point score, joined at the top to look like train wheels; miss the ten tricks and the same amount comes off instead.

In Spades circles that require a minimum team bid of four tricks, what is that minimum called?

Board bites hardest beside a nil: under this rule the partner of a nil bidder must promise the full four tricks alone.

Which Spades variant makes each player bid exactly the number of spades held, or else go nil?

Whiz takes the judgement out of bidding: the hand itself names the number, and blind bids have no place in it.

Which South Asian card game, a close cousin of Spades, also makes spades the permanent trump suit?

Call Break is loved in Nepal, India and Bangladesh, where it is dealt and played anticlockwise and every player bids alone, with no partners.

A Spades variant bans bids that total the exact number of tricks, a rule borrowed from which game?

Oh Hell uses the same twist, which guarantees that the bids can never all come true: on every hand somebody must fall short or take a trick too many.

One Spades variant makes the jack of spades top trump, called the right bauer, copying which game?

Euchre calls its top trumps bowers, a name that echoes the German Bauer, a farmer or a jack, and the Spades version promotes the jack of clubs to second place too.

Which city did card-game writer George Coffin name as the birthplace of Spades in the late 1930s?

Cincinnati was Coffin's answer after tracing the game to a narrow window between 1937 and 1939, which makes Spades far younger than most classic card games.

What mid-1990s development carried Spades far beyond America and helped standardise its rules?

Online card rooms needed one agreed rulebook for strangers to play together, so internet play and tournaments ironed out many local differences.

In New York City Spades, what happens to a team that fails its bid on two hands running?

It loses the whole game whatever the score, a sudden-death rule that players know as being shot back to back.

The spade suit's English name probably comes from 'spada', a southern European word for which weapon?

Sword is what spada means in Italian and in Old Spanish; the French name for the same suit, pique, points to a different weapon, the pike.

For decades Spades was little known abroad except near American bases in which European country?

Germany was one of the few places outside the United States where the game took root, carried there by American troops stationed in the country.