Play Spades online free against three computer opponents: bid the tricks you can take, guard your trumps, and reach 500 first. The full partnership Spades card game, bags and nil bids included.
About Spades
Spades is a partnership trick-taking game: you and North against West and East, with all three of the other seats played by the computer. Spades are permanent trump. Every hand opens with a bid — each seat names how many of the thirteen tricks it expects to win, and your number plus North's is your team's contract. Make it and you score ten points a trick; miss it and you lose ten a trick. The first side to 500 takes the game.
The bid is where hands are won, and a lazy one is punished several hands later. Every trick above your contract is a bag, worth a point now and part of a 100-point penalty when the tenth one lands, so bidding four and taking seven is not the good hand it looks like. The pad marks the number the built-in evaluator would bid, and it counts winners rather than high cards: a fourth spade is worth more to it than a bare king. The other two seats contest a trick for as long as your side can still be set, whether or not their own contract is already safe.
Nil is the swing that decides close games. Bid zero, win nothing, and your team gains 100; take a single trick and it loses 100, which is why NIL has to be pressed twice. Your partner still plays their own bid and a nil hand's tricks count for the team, so a nil that dies can still drag the contract home. The computer plays around it — North wins leads to give a naked hand room to throw its dangerous cards, and when West or East is the seat on zero, both of them lead low underneath and wait. Games run to 500, and both teams can cross that line in the same hand, with the higher total winning.
Where Spades comes from
Spades was devised in the Midwest of the United States in the late 1930s; the bridge writer George Coffin traced it to Cincinnati between 1937 and 1939. It descends from Whist and, like Bridge, Euchre and Pinochle, belongs to the trick-taking family, but it was its simplicity next to Bridge that made it a favourite of soldiers in the Second World War, who carried it around the world; veterans then took it to college campuses on the GI Bill, and from the mid-1990s online card rooms made it popular internationally. Partnership play to 500 points, with bags and nil bids, is the standard form; this version is 360 PlayZone's own take on the classic. Source.
Inside Spades: what we checked
The numbers below come from Spades's own source code, and the screenshots are from our own test run of the game (20 October 2026).
- Bags carry over from hand to hand. Each extra trick is one bag worth 1 point, and every time your team's running total reaches 10 bags you lose 100 points and the count drops by 10, even if that happens in a later hand.
- A missed contract costs 10 per trick bid but earns no bags. A made nil is worth 100 and a broken nil costs 100, and the nil bidder's own tricks still count towards the team's contract.
- Bidding nil takes two taps: the first on 0 arms it and the second, within about two and a half seconds, confirms it, so a slip of the finger cannot commit a 200-point swing.
- The game is first to 500, but if both teams are at or past 500 with the same score it plays on until one is ahead.
- The computer players do play for nil: when someone is bidding nil they lead low cards to try to force that player to take a trick, and they try to protect their own partner's nil.
- Games played, wins, nils bid and your best score are kept in this browser.
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How to play Spades
Bid the number of tricks you expect to win; your bid and North's make your team's contract. Follow the suit that was led if you hold it, otherwise play anything. Spades beat every other suit, and nobody may lead one until a spade has been thrown on a trick led in something else — the small spade beside the status line lights up when that happens. Ten points a trick for a contract you make, ten off for one you miss, and hands run until a team reaches 500.
Controls
Desktop: click a number on the bid pad, then click a card to play it. Arrow keys or WASD move the selection, number keys set a bid, Space or Enter confirms the bid and plays the highlighted card, H hints, N starts a new game, ? opens the rules and M mutes. Touch: tap a bid number — NIL takes two taps to confirm — then tap a card on your turn, and tap anywhere while a computer seat is thinking to skip its pause.
Tips & tricks
- Count what your contract already covers before you win another trick. Ten bags cost 100 points and reset the counter, so once your side has its number, ducking with a low card is worth more than taking the trick with a high one.
- Nil is decided by your spades and your bare honours, not by how weak the hand looks overall. Three small spades topped by the nine are safe to sit on; a singleton king in a side suit is not, because the first lead in that suit drags it out.
- A void behind two spades, or a singleton behind three, is the cheapest source of tricks here, and the bid evaluator pays for exactly that shape. Count those ruffs into your bid, then play the short suit out early while the other seats still have to follow it.
- The two blue seats keep fighting for tricks after their own contract is safe, purely because you can still be set. They only relax once your number is settled one way or the other, so the trick you are one short of is always the most expensive one at the table.
Frequently asked questions
Does Spades save my progress?
Partly. Spades keeps a running win/loss tally and your settings in this browser's local storage; there is no level progress to save. Nothing is uploaded and no account is involved — clearing your browser data is what resets it.
Is Spades unblocked at school or work?
Spades is a plain web page of about 81 KB — no plugin, no installer, no app store — so it loads on a Chromebook or a locked-down school or office laptop the same way any other page does, and the whole game arrives in one short download. Whether it opens comes down to your network's filter rather than the game itself.
Who made Spades?
Spades was built in-house by the 360 PlayZone team using open web technology (HTML5), which is why it runs instantly without any download.
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From our blog
Spades features in Hearts, Spades, Gin Rummy, Crazy Eights: Four Card Games Worth Actually Learning.