Play Spades online

How multiplayer Spades works

Playing Spades online with other people, step by step: the code, the seats, the table rules, and what happens when somebody drops out.

Four players, two partnerships

Spades is played by exactly four, in two partnerships with partners sitting opposite. The host opens the table — that needs a free account — and shares the code or the link from "Copy link"; the others choose a name and join as guests. From a phone, "Challenge a friend" sends the same invitation straight into Messenger, Instagram or any other app you already talk in.

The host chooses the target, 250 or 500 points, and everyone sees the choice. The game can start when four are seated.

Choosing your partner

Nobody picks partners from a menu: the order people sit down decides it. The first and third to sit down are one partnership, and the second and fourth are the other, and the lobby lists the players in exactly that order.

So if two couples want to play against each other, let the host sit, then somebody from the other pair, then the host's partner, then the last player. To play with a friend against two bots, the host adds one bot before the friend joins and the second after. A bot can be removed and added again to move it to the end of the list; a person who needs to move leaves and joins again.

Bidding and playing

Bids go round the table from the dealer's left, and everyone sees each bid as it is made, including your partner's. Nil is bid as zero and is scored on its own. The table then shows each partnership's contract and how many tricks each side has taken.

Partners cannot see each other's cards, and there is no chat at the table. If you play on a call, the only thing to say about your hand is your bid.

Between hands

After the last trick the table shows what each side made, the bags added and any nil that held or broke. Once all four have pressed "Ready for the next hand", the next deal comes, with the deal moving one seat to the left.

The first partnership to reach the target wins. Ten bags cost a side a hundred along the way, and the table keeps the count.

When somebody drops out

A partnership game cannot wait for a missing player for long, and it does not have to end either. When somebody's connection drops, their seat is held for twenty-five seconds; after that a bot plays it until they return and take it back. A player who presses Leave is replaced by a bot for the rest of the game, and their partner plays on with it.

If the host leaves, hosting passes to whoever has been sitting longest. A table nobody plays at for six hours is cleared away.