Beginner's Guide to Spades

Video Transcript

"This section called review of basics is primarily intended for those who have not played similar card games. Now I know a lot of us have grown up playing games like go fish or hearts or old maid or gin rummy and what have you. And these are games that have their own rules. However, spades is a partnership game although there are variations in spades that exist for individuals, you can play three handed, what's called cut throat spades and we'll be covering that later. But in order to understand spades, you have to understand the partnership aspect. I'm sure that you've seen other card games such as peanuckle, bidwist and so forth that have a partnership aspect. In order to a proficient Spades player, you have to understand working with your partner. Also, the suits in spades are ranked the same as the suits in any other card game that is similar. For example, let's look at the diamond suit. The ace is the high card, followed by king, queen, jack, all the way down to the deuce. The same thing for hearts which I have in reverse, the same thing for clubs and I'll move this ace of clubs over, and of course, spades suit is always trump. This is not like bridge where you have an auction that determines the trump. There is no trump that's a bid, that's not part of spades. There are some variations of spades which feature the use of the big joker and the little joker. This is classical old school spades."