The bit everyone gets wrong
On one phone, every turn needs a pass — your hand is secret and the screen guards it. This game is built for a phone per player; play it that way when you can.
All games · Western
How to play
Spades
Partners bid how many tricks they will take, then must make the contract.
- Players
- 4 players
- You need
- One phone
- Origin
- Western
- Shelf
- Card games
The rules
5 steps.
- Partners sit opposite: seats 1+3 against 2+4. Each player bids how many tricks they expect to win — zero is "nil", a bold promise to take none.
- The leader plays a card; everyone must follow its suit if they can. Spades are trumps, but cannot be led until one has been played.
- Highest spade wins the trick, else the highest card of the led suit. The winner leads next.
- A team that makes its combined bid scores ten per trick bid; falling short loses the same. Extra tricks are bags — ten bags cost a hundred points.
- First team to five hundred wins.
What the phone does
The phone deals, enforces following suit and the spades-broken rule, refuses illegal plays outright, and keeps score including nils and bags. It is a full referee — in a card game every rule is checkable.
It is a dealer and a scorekeeper, never a judge. It cannot hear the room and it does not decide who was right.
And 58 more
One phone.
The whole night.
Spades is one game in a library of 59. Finish it and PartyStack names the next one — a different kind each time, so nobody has to go back to a menu.
