Additional Rules of Spades

Video Transcript

"Opening lead in the standard format, which we use in tournaments and a lot of online sites use this, including Grab.com, is that the dealer always has the last bid. That's a tremendous advantage. Also the opening lead is to the left of the dealer. And the opening bid is to the left of the dealer. So there is a structure and an order to the game. And once you understand the bidding system, and we'll talk about evaluating your hand, then the procedure or the protocol for playing the game becomes very easy. Now another quick word of advice. When you pick up your hand, when we deal out a hand, it's very good to sort out your suites in some sort of order. We'll just look at something like this. You don't really want your hand all must together. It's much better to arrange your hand in some sort of logical fashion so that it's easier to identify the cards. Now a lot of people prefer to put the trump on the end which isn't a bad idea. I like to have them from ascending to descending. So if this was your hand, it's a pretty nice hand actually, you would be able to discern which cards you wish to play. So again when you pick up your hand you sort your hand and then your ready to make your bid. And that is the key part of the game is the bidding. The bidding is essential for getting in the right contract, the right bid. If you over bid in spades, your punished with being "set". If you underbid in spades, then your going to accumulate all these extra tricks and these are called "bags". So you would do well to look at the book or look at an online site. Look at the rules. Maybe play at Grab.com. Play against the box. These are players, these are the computer players. That is why they are called box. You get an opportunity to practice against 3 box then you bring your partner in and then you become familiar with your game. So again, one round of bidding, dealer has last bid. Bid to the left of the dealer. One round, the scorekeeper or the computer will keep score for you automatically. Sort out your hand. That's going to be done for you automatically by the computer. Then you just play the hand. That's why I've always felt that the Internet is the absolute best medium to learn this game. You don't want to go into a tournament as a novice. You will get eaten up alive by sharks and people might even be a little upset because your not following suite and doing that sort of thing. So again keep in mind, use the Internet, use the computer. Grab.com is a great site there's other site too but I'm kind of partial towards Grab.com because I like the graphics and I like the way it's set up. So, in any case, this is the way to do this and I think you'll be much more comfortable learning the game this way at a nice casual pace. "