Dealing in the Game of Spades

Series Summary

Spades is a bidding game largely based upon card counting skills and strategies. Players compete in rounds, hoping to win at least as many books or tricks as they bid—and the high card of the coordinate suit of each hand wins a book. True to its namesake, spades trumps all the other suits in any round of play; but there are specific guidelines as to when a spade may be played. The ultimate object of spades is to win the most points; and there are ways to score points other than winning the most books, such as going ‘nil,’ or bidding that you will accrue no tricks at all that round.

Spades has been played since the early 1940’s, and has remained localized mostly to the contiguous United States. Believed to be closely related to bridge and whist, spades can be played with as few as two people; many times team play occurs. Strategies for teams are often very different from individual play, because of the ability for one player to set an advantage for the other.

In this free card game video series, learn how to play spades. Get basic rules and directions, as well as strategies for winning more books or tricks in a hand of spades. Once you get a handle on the basics, watch the advanced series on spades strategy and become a master card shark.

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Dan Kimbrough on behalf of expertvillage.com, in this clip we are going to discuss how to properly deal a game of spades. When dealing in spades you always deal to the left of the dealer. Some people to view this as south, west, north and east. Whenever labeling the teams, north and south player teams, west and east player teams and so when you are dealing, you always deal one card at a time around the table. You want to be careful to not deal like this at a angle because you may end up showing someone the cards. You want to deal tilt it down so no one could see what cards are what. You are going to go all the way around and the way you know who dealt properly is that the dealer always get the last card of the deck. There is 13 cards that go to each person and if you start here 1,2,3,4, and this person is dealer should always end up with the last card of the deck. If the dealer does not get the last card of the deck you have two options, you could immediately call for a misdeal or you could decide to count them to make sure that every one has 13 cards. If everyone has 13 cards and they are happy you could keep going. Usually though it is called a misdeal cause the dealer didn't get the last card, you shuffle up and the deal moves on to the next person and if it happens to be a misdeal the next person gets to deal. "