Spades Glossary
Spades has its own vocabulary, borrowed partly from whist and bridge and partly invented at kitchen tables. Some of it is precise and some of it is slang, and the two get used interchangeably. Below is what each term actually means, grouped by where you will hear it — bidding, play, scoring, rules disputes, formats, and the shorthand of online tables.
This guide is intentionally practical. It is written for players who want to make fewer avoidable errors in real games, not memorize abstract theory. If you apply the checkpoints below during live hands, your decisions become clearer, your contracts become more realistic, and your long-run performance improves.
Bidding Words
Bid — the number of tricks you promise to win, stated aloud before any card is played. Bidding runs clockwise from the dealer's left and a bid is final once the next player has spoken.
Contract — the two partners' bids added together, and the number the side must reach to score. A four and a five make a contract of nine; either partner's tricks count toward it and neither number is tracked separately.
Nil — a bid of zero. It is scored on its own, separately from your partner's bid: a hundred points if you take no trick and minus a hundred if you take one.
Blind nil — a nil declared before you have looked at your cards, worth double at two hundred either way. Most houses restrict it to a side that is behind by a set margin, commonly a hundred points, and many allow partners to exchange one card after the declaration.
Blind bid — any numeric bid made sight unseen, usually blind six or blind seven, scored at double value. Not part of standard rules but common in casual play.
Bidding your hand — bidding the number of tricks you can actually count, with no padding in either direction. The opposite of sandbagging.
Table talk — any comment, pause or gesture that tells your partner something about your hand after bidding is closed. Prohibited in every serious ruleset; the only legal information is the cards on the table and the bids that were spoken.
Whiz — a bidding restriction in which each player must bid either nil or the exact number of spades in their hand. A format, not a type of bid.
Mirror — a stricter version of the same idea where everyone bids their spade count exactly and nil is not available.
High-level takeaway: keep your process stable under pressure. Most rating gains in Spades come from avoiding repeat mistakes, not from occasional brilliant hands. Build a reliable decision routine and your average table quality rises quickly.
Cards, Tricks and Play
Trick — one round of play in which each of the four players contributes exactly one card, clockwise, starting with the leader.
Book — the same thing as a trick: one completed round of four cards. In whist and bridge a book means the first six tricks, which score nothing; Spades kept the word and dropped the six.
Trump — a suit whose cards beat every card of every other suit. In Spades the trump suit is spades in every hand and is never chosen, named or bid.
Lead — the first card played to a trick. The winner of a trick leads the next one; the player to the dealer's left leads the first.
Follow suit — to play a card of the suit that was led. Compulsory whenever you hold that suit, and it overrides any wish to trump, duck or discard.
Ruff, or cut — to play a spade on a trick led in another suit, which is only legal when you hold none of that suit. A ruff wins the trick unless somebody ruffs higher.
Void — holding no cards at all in a suit, which frees you to play anything when that suit is led.
Singleton — exactly one card in a suit. Doubleton — exactly two. Both matter at bidding time because they become voids quickly and voids become ruffs.
Off-suit — any suit other than spades. An off-suit ace wins a trick only until somebody trumps it.
Break, or broken — spades become legal to lead once any spade has been played to a trick led in another suit. Before that, leading a spade is illegal unless spades are all you hold.
Duck — to play low and deliberately lose a trick you could have won, usually because your side has already made its contract and does not want bags.
Cover — to play a card higher than your partner's when your partner has bid nil, so their card cannot end up winning.
Boston — winning all thirteen tricks in one hand. Also called a run or a sweep. Standard scoring pays only the contract plus overtricks; a bonus for it is a house rule.
High-level takeaway: keep your process stable under pressure. Most rating gains in Spades come from avoiding repeat mistakes, not from occasional brilliant hands. Build a reliable decision routine and your average table quality rises quickly.
Scoring Words
Bag — one trick taken beyond your side's contract. Worth one point the moment you take it, and the tenth one is worth minus a hundred.
Overtrick — the formal name for a bag. The two words mean exactly the same thing.
Sandbag — to underbid on purpose so that being set is impossible. It works for one hand and fails over a game, because it manufactures bags, which is where the word comes from.
Sandbagging rule, or bag penalty — the hundred-point deduction applied when a side's running bag total reaches ten. Ten bags then come off the counter and any surplus carries forward.
Set — to fail your contract. A side that bids eight and takes seven is set for minus eighty, ten per trick bid, with no credit for the seven it won. Also used as a verb by the other side: we set them.
Undertrick — a trick short of the contract. Borrowed from bridge and rarely used at a Spades table, because Spades does not scale the penalty: one short and five short cost the same.
Bagging out — reaching the tenth bag and taking the hundred-point hit.
Running the table — winning every remaining trick from some point in the hand onward.
High-level takeaway: keep your process stable under pressure. Most rating gains in Spades come from avoiding repeat mistakes, not from occasional brilliant hands. Build a reliable decision routine and your average table quality rises quickly.
Rules Violations
Renege — failing to follow suit when you held a card of the suit led. The most common infraction in the game and almost always accidental.
Revoke — the older bridge and whist word for the same offence. In Spades the two terms are interchangeable.
Renege penalty — most commonly a three-trick transfer: three books are taken from the offending side and credited to the opponents before scoring. Some houses instead set the offending side outright, and some deduct three books without crediting anyone. All three are in wide use, so agree before you deal.
Misdeal — a deal that produces unequal hands, exposes a card, or uses a fouled deck. The cards are gathered and redealt by the same dealer.
Out of turn — playing before your seat's turn comes round. A separate infraction from a renege, normally remedied by retracting the card while the trick is still incomplete.
High-level takeaway: keep your process stable under pressure. Most rating gains in Spades come from avoiding repeat mistakes, not from occasional brilliant hands. Build a reliable decision routine and your average table quality rises quickly.
Formats and Variants
Partnership Spades — the standard game: four players, two teams of two, partners seated opposite each other.
Cutthroat — three-player Spades with no partnerships. One card, usually the two of clubs, is removed so each player takes seventeen, and everyone scores individually.
Solo, or individual — four players with no partnerships, each contract bid and scored alone.
Suicide — a partnership variant in which one member of each side must bid nil on every hand.
Joker-joker-deuce-deuce — a variant adding both jokers as the two highest trumps and promoting the two of clubs to a spade, with the two of hearts and two of diamonds removed to keep the deck at 52. Trump order runs big joker, little joker, two of spades, two of clubs, then ace of spades downward.
Two-handed Spades — a version for two players in which each hand is built by drawing from a face-down stock before any trick is played.
High-level takeaway: keep your process stable under pressure. Most rating gains in Spades come from avoiding repeat mistakes, not from occasional brilliant hands. Build a reliable decision routine and your average table quality rises quickly.
Shorthand You Will Hear Online
The board — the four bids taken together. The board is eleven means the bids add to eleven, which tells you two tricks are unclaimed.
Pitch, dump, throw off — to discard a useless card when you are void and have chosen not to trump.
Sandbagger — a player who habitually underbids. Used as an insult, usually accurately.
Setting — playing to break the other side's contract rather than to maximise your own score. A legitimate strategy when the arithmetic favours it.
Nil-safe — describing a hand with no aces, short low spades and long weak side suits, meaning a hand that can support a nil bid.
Bags out — shorthand for having just triggered the hundred-point bag penalty.
High-level takeaway: keep your process stable under pressure. Most rating gains in Spades come from avoiding repeat mistakes, not from occasional brilliant hands. Build a reliable decision routine and your average table quality rises quickly.
FAQ
Is a book the same thing as a trick in Spades?
Yes. In Spades the two words are completely interchangeable and both mean one round of four cards. The word came from whist and bridge, where a book means the first six tricks a declarer takes, but that meaning did not survive the move to Spades.
What is the difference between a bag and a set?
A bag is one trick above your contract, worth a single point until the tenth one costs your side a hundred. A set is falling short of your contract, which costs ten points per trick bid immediately and gives no credit for the tricks you did win.
Why is deliberate underbidding called sandbagging?
Because the extra tricks it produces are bags. A player who shaves a trick off every bid is quietly filling the side's bag counter, and the name attaches the tactic to its consequence.
What does cutthroat mean in Spades?
It means the three-player game with no partnerships. The two of clubs is removed so the remaining fifty-one cards deal seventeen each, and every player bids, plays and scores entirely for themselves.
Does a boston earn a bonus?
Not under standard scoring. Taking all thirteen tricks pays your contract at ten a trick plus one point and one bag for each trick above it, which on a small bid is actually a problem. Bonuses of a hundred or two hundred points exist but are house rules.