Aunts, uncles, homies, bartenders, barbers, gamblers, church deacons, Harlemites, Pittsburghers, grad students, school principles, lawyers, landlords, Deltas, Dominicans, felons, Ellen DeGeneres — it doesn’t matter.
If you’ve faced me in spades at any point in the last decade, you almost definitely walked away a loser, and probably wanted to fight. I’ve played approximately 70 times in that time period, and I can only recall one loss — at a spades tournament I held in my apartment in 2015. There were 16 teams, and mine (“Team Shank”) got upset in the semis. They thought I was done. They threw a parade. They documented it on Instagram. But, like Jordan in ’96 and John Wick in tapered Italian formal wear, I came back better, smarter and stronger.
The rules of spades are straightforward enough. It’s a team card game where each person gets 13 cards, and the highest cards win. A spade, however, trumps all, but you can only play one if you’ve exhausted the lead suit. There are 13 available rounds, called books or tricks, to be won, and you keep score by predicting, before the hand is played, how many books your team will win that hand. Adding intrigue is the fact that you’re seated across from your partner instead of next to them, so you have no idea what cards they have. The only thing they’re allowed to communicate to you is how many books they think they’ll get from it. Anything more detailed — succinctly known as “talking across the board”— results in penalty. (And, occasionally, “accidental” pushes down empty elevator shafts.)
Those rules are static, but part of the fun of spades is that they vary by region. Sometimes by household. The big and little jokers are the highest cards in the game, and most variations of spades make the two of spades the third most powerful card. But there are places where the two of diamonds also becomes a trump card, which is like adding sausage to a Big Mac. And there are many other house-dependent decrees, rules with shorthands like “ten for two” and “first seven” and “going blind” that all veteran spades players are familiar with.
Anyway, games are played to 350 or 500, and winning requires a mastery of the ecosystem of strategizing, card-counting, and bourbon retention this dynamic encourages. This is where my magic happens. I win so frequently because I bluff my opponents into losing.
Again, each hand has 13 books to be won, and the goal is for your team to match (or beat) your pre-hand prediction — your bid. (If you bid eight, and you get eight, that’s 80 points.) But these bids don’t happen in a vacuum, because the other team is bidding too, and a secondary goal is to set them — what happens when you prevent them from getting their bid, and they lose points. One way to set a team is to make them much more confident about their hand than they should be: a goal that can be accomplished with targeted, intentional underbidding. Let’s say, for instance, my partner and I think we have seven books. But instead of bidding seven, we bid six, with the hope that the other team will take the bait, bid seven, and fall short.
This is not a unique strategy, as this sort of gamesmanship is well-known. What distinguishes me is my commitment to it. I spend the entire game hunting for opportunities to drop my underbid bomb; a conservative cheetah lurking in the bushes for a cocky gazelle who thinks his king’s gonna walk. And all it takes is one set hand to shift the trajectory of the entire game.
The rub is that one of the unspoken rules of spades is to be as sincere as possible when bidding, and intentional underbidding spits in the eye of that rule. It’s frowned upon by the sort of people who frown upon such things — I like to call them “losers”— and there’s considerable social pressure not to be an underbidder. There’s even a rule in place sometimes (“sandbags”) to discourage it.
Unfortunately (for them), I’m impervious to spades-shaming. I play within the rules, and it’s not my fault if the possum act keeps working. I am the James Harden of spades — a highly skilled and thickly bearded mercenary whose mastery of the rules allows for a, um, liberal interpretation of them.
Adding insult to trickery is the fact that, for me, this win-at-all-costs-even-if-it-induces-throat-punches sensibility is unique to spades. I’ve played basketball my entire life, and I was taught by my father, who taught me how to play, that the way someone hoops sheds light on their personality. And even now I try to hoop as honorably as I can. I take pride in being a creative passer, I very rarely make calls, I don’t cheat teams out of points when keeping score, and if I foul someone, I’ll call it myself. And I’m 41, which means I’m in my argumentative oldhead prime, and I’m still a model citizen out there.
So what distinguishes spades? Why am I a rule-twisting cutthroat there and nowhere else? Honestly, I think it’s just about winning. When hooping, I’m competitive, but I still have fun even if my team doesn’t win. It still has cardio benefits. I still feel full of vigor. I still savor the sweat equity. It still feels great when a lefty hesi lifts someone off their feet. Spades, however, is an hourslong investment, where you’re sitting in a chair, eating lukewarm pizza, and feeling your blood pressure rise and dip like wave-pool water. It’s a war of attrition — I’d say 15 percent of spades games are ended by someone just getting up and just … doing something else and not coming back — and there’s no moral victories. If you don’t win, what’s the point?
That was intended to be a rhetorical question, but if my most frequent spades partner (my wife) were here, she’d answer it, and I know what she’d say: “It’s not fun with you because you take all the fun out of it.”
She is not a fan of my strategery. She believes it to be cheap and, when playing against her grandmother, cruel. For her, the camaraderie and community-building aspects of spades matter too. She has a point, I guess. If squinting, I could maybe see the value in that other stuff, too.
The last time she criticized me about this, I straight up asked why she continued to be my partner if my methods bothered her so. Her response: “Well … I like winning too.”
♠
How to Play the Best (and Blackest) Card Game
The goal of Spades is for you and your partner to combine to win as many rounds as possible.
First, you need four people and one set of 52 cards. (The jokers are included, so remove the two of clubs and two of hearts.)
Then, split into teams, and sit across from — not next to — your partner, so you can’t see each other’s hands.
The dealer — which rotates after each hand (everyone gets an opportunity)—-then shuffles and deals 13 cards to each person.
There are 13 available rounds (or books) to be won.
You must follow the lead suit, and the highest card always wins — unless a spade is played. For instance, if I’m going first and I play the ace of clubs, you must play a club if you still possess one.
But if you are out of clubs, you could “cut”— which is what happens when you play a spade (any spade) and you’d beat my ace. Spades are king here — hence the name — so the more spades you happen to have, the better.
The goal of the game is for you and your partner to combine to win as many books as possible, and score is kept by predicting, before the hand is played, how many books you’ll win together, and writing it on paper. (If you predict 7 and win 7, that’s 70 points.)
Damon Young (@DamonYoungVSB) is the author of “What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker” and a founder of VerySmartBrothas.
