Scoring
Spades scoring
In Spades you score for landing your team's bid. Bid too high and you lose points; win too many and the extra books pile up as bags. Here is how every point is counted.
Scoring at a glance
- If your team meets its bid, you earn 10 points per book bid.
- If your team fails its bid, you lose 10 points per book bid.
- Every book over your bid fills the meter. Ten bags = -100 points.
Making your bid
If your team wins at least as many books as it bid, you score 10 points for each book you bid, plus 1 point for every extra book.
Example: your team bids 5 and wins 7 books. That is 50 points for the bid plus 2 for the extra books, so 52.
Bid 5, win 7: 50 points for the bid plus 2 bags = 52.
Missing your bid
If your team wins fewer books than it bid, you are set: you lose 10 points for each book you bid. Extra books don't matter when you miss.
Example: your team bids 6 and wins only 4 books. You lose 60 points.
Bags and the 10-bag penalty
Every book won beyond your bid is a bag (some players call it a sandbag). Each bag is worth 1 point, but the bags also add up.
When a team collects 10 bags, it loses 100 points and its bag count drops by 10. That is why good players try to land their bid exactly instead of winning everything they can.
Nil
A nil bid scores 100 points if the nil player wins no books and loses 100 if they win any. Blind nil, bid before looking at your cards, is usually worth 200 either way. Neither is offered in ClubSpade games at the moment.
Team totals
Partners share one score. Their bids are added together and so are the books they win, so a partner's extra book can cover your missing one.
A ClubSpade game is one hand, so the team with more points after the 13th book wins. The 10-bag penalty still applies but rarely comes up in a single hand.
Hearts on Fire bonuses
ClubSpade's Hearts on Fire mode scores bids the same way and adds bonuses: 5 points for each heart in a book you win, 5 for a book with no hearts in it, and 50 for winning all 13 hearts.
The Queen of Hearts is the Flaming Queen: winning her in the last book is worth 50, but winning her earlier costs 25. All of these bonuses are cancelled if any spade is played during the hand.
Firestorm is a declaration you make when you bid. Win no books that hand and your team gets 20 points, even if spades were played.
Spades score calculator
Enter your team's bid and the books you won. The result uses the same scoring ClubSpade uses in its games.
Team bid
5
Books won
6
Bags before this hand
0
51 points
Bid made
Bags after this hand: 1
Your team can win at most 13 books in a hand.
Questions players ask
How many points is a bag worth in Spades?
One point each. But every 10 bags a team collects costs it 100 points, so bags are usually something to avoid.
What happens if you miss your bid?
Your team is set and loses 10 points for every book it bid. A bid of 5 that falls short loses 50 points.
How is nil scored?
Plus 100 if the nil player wins no books, minus 100 if they win any. The partner's own bid is scored on its own.
What score do you play to?
Home games usually go to 500. A ClubSpade game is one hand, and the higher team score after 13 books wins.
Try it at the table
Play a hand against the computer now, or let the tutorial walk you through one card by card.