Spades Strategy for Teams

Playing spades for money is a fun way to spend a couple of hours with your friends. This competitive card game is usually played in team fashion. That means you'll have a partner and compete against another pair of players. Spades strategies for teams is very important if you want to win your games consistently.

Spades strategy encompasses bidding, the manner in which you play your hand, and how you approach your opponents. There are many valid strategies. Here are a few tips that you should use when you are playing as a team.

Spades Team Bidding

One of the biggest challenges for a team in spades is bidding. This is because you cannot discuss the specific cards that you hold in your hand with your partner. You can only speak of how many books you can catch. It is left up to you and your partner to intuitively interpret what each of you holds.

Team bidding is something that gets better with time and practice. The more games you play with a specific partner, the more comfortable you will get with how they bid and play. You will then be able to make a reasonable guess as to how strong your partner's hand is, based on the number of books they bid.

Some spades players are loose. They take more risks and are apt to bid on possibilities. Some spades players are more conservative, only bidding on what they know they can catch. You could make the argument that the perfect spades team is one which is combined of both player types. The team members in that scenario help to balance each other.

The most important part of spades team bidding strategy is to be patient and discuss you hand as far as the rules allow. Do not proceed with making your bid until both of you are on the same page. Any disagreements in the bidding stage will only be magnified as the hand is played out.

If either of you seems unsure of what to bid, it may be better to err on the side of caution. If you think the two of you can catch 7 and your partner only sees 6, going with the lower number can avoid trouble.

The main point here is that you both agree on the bid. If you convince your partner to bid more than they seem comfortable with, you have to own that when the bid fails. Take responsibility if you were the one that wanted to push the bid higher.

Spades Strategy in Game Play

Once the bidding is done, the hand has to play out. There is an element of strategy here, too. You and your partner need to stay sharp to make sure that you don't make mistakes than affect the outcome of the hand.

Undercutting is a frequent problem with spades teams. This is when you take a book that your partner has already caught. An example will make the mistake more clear.

The player to your left begins play by leading the 10 of diamonds. Your team member plays next and plays the king of diamonds. The player to your right drops the 7 of diamonds.  At this point it is your turn to play next, but you have no diamonds. You can play a spade to trump, or cut, the book. But this would be pointless because your partner has already taken the book with the king. The correct play is for you to throw off a low card from one of the other suits.

You will achieve two purposes with this move. You will not waste a spade and undercut your partner. You will also be letting your partner know that you do not have any cards in the suit he just played.

Paying attention to the board in this manner is the biggest thing you can do to help your team. Any time that you undercut your partner in a game of spades can affect the overall outcome of the hand.

Team Communication in Spades

There is a fine line to walk when it comes to communication between partners at the spades table. The rules of spades do not permit partners to speak directly with one another about their hand as the game is in progress. Doing so is considered cheating. It may cause you to lose books that you have already caught, or it may cause you to lose the game.

Unspoken communication is not prohibited. This type of communication is built by paying attention to what your partner plays. To expand upon the earlier example, your partner can use throwing off to communicate to you information about the cards in his or her hand.

The card that you chose to throw off in the example above could have come from the suit that you have the least of, or the suit in which you hold some high cards. You are then telling your partner to lead in this suit because you will probably be able to take the book and the lead. This is how skilled spades partners communicate at the table.

Spade Strategies for Playing Your Opponents

It can be hard to assess the strengths and weakness of a team that you have not played before. If you have played spades before with your opponents, their overall playing style should start becoming familiar to you.

Again, spades strategies for teams when it comes to opponents begins with paying strict attention to what is being played. You can sometimes catch information about the hand of an opponent when you are watching closely.

You should also learn to recognize when a team is vulnerable to not making their books. When this happens you will want to apply the pressure to see if you can set your opponents and give them a negative score.

Much of spades strategies for teams is intuitive. This is something that can only be built over time, especially if you are playing with the same person over and over again.  

More topics:

- Strategies for Playing When You Are Spade Tight
- Leading Trumps in Spades - The Roll Call