Pulling Spades - Strategies for Winning

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 some important winning strategies for playing spades. Our expert will show you techniques such as pulling spades, sandbagging, how to go nil, how to play a hand with too many of one suit, when to cut or throw off, and what to do when you have no spades.

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Dan Kimbrough and in this clip I'm going to discuss a spades strategy called pulling spades. Okay as you could see we have already set up a game. We have fast forward through the game a little bit. Three hands has already been played. My team has one book, the other team has two. Now this person is now leading, they won the last book. The point of pulling spades is when you have a high number of spades or a high cards in your hand. You want to try to use these early on so these then become effective and then you also have one other set of books left, meaning you could feasibly take all of these if you play your cards right, no plan attendant. So it is their lead, they are going to lead a club not knowing anything. They lead a club, now as you could see there is no clubs left so I can cut. Once you have cut a spade you could lead with a spade afterwards, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to lay the 10. The reason you lay the 10 is because it is high enough to force anyone one wants to come after you to get it if they are cutting right now to have to play the jack or the king and the point is to get rid of those two cards because those are the only two cards high enough left. So you have laid the 10, this person has a club so they have to play and this person has a club so they have to play. Now the board is yours, you have taken control. Now what you want to do is lead with the big joker it is the highest one in the deck. You are forcing everyone else to play a spade. Everyone else is going to play a low spade cause they don't want to get rid of their higher spades hoping you can keep this run going. So know you have played the big joker, you come behind and play the little joker. Everyone again is going to play a lower spade, trying to stay underneath you. You have manage to drop the jack which now means that the king is the only one left for you to take. So you lay the ace, in laying the aces you learn this person has no more spades left cause now they are playing other suits. Your partner has an 8 of spades and the king is now out which means you have taken care of the big, the little, the ace, the king and the jack. You have played the 10 and you have the queen, so when you play the queen the 7, the queen of hearts, the 8 of hearts, they are throwing off trying to get rid of the cards that they have, you still are in control of the game. When you have a 7 you realize that no one else has any spades left so they are just going to play anything at random, trying to hold off. You play your last one and you manage to turn all the spades that you have played into a winning hand. The point of pulling spades when you are playing in a game is to make sure you have the control. Once the first spades has been laid out, if you got the big, the little, the ace and any of the face cards there is no point to holding on to them, you could go ahead and pull them out early. Once you have pulled those spades out the nice thing is there is not spades left in the deck."