[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"c\u002Fspades\u002F3-player-spades":3,"x\u002Fspades\u002F3-player-spades":67},{"key":4,"path":5,"canonicalPath":5,"category":6,"kicker":6,"title":7,"seoTitle":-1,"description":8,"intro":9,"practice":-1,"practiceTo":-1,"practiceLabel":-1,"sections":10,"faq":51},"spades--3-player-spades","\u002Fspades\u002F3-player-spades","Variants","3 Player Spades","Three-handed Spades explained: strip the deck to 51, deal 17 cards each, and play every hand for yourself, plus the two-on-one dynamics that decide games.","To play Spades with three people, take one low card out of the deck, deal the remaining fifty-one cards seventeen apiece, and let everyone bid and score for themselves. There are no partnerships: it is cutthroat Spades with a chair taken away. The card has to go because fifty-two simply will not split by three, and seventeen-card hands, with two opponents instead of three, change the bidding targets, the trump counts and the whole social dynamic of the table.",[11,17,24,31,38,45],{"heading":12,"paragraphs":13},"Making A Fifty-Two Card Game Work For Three",[14,15,16],"Fifty-two divided by three leaves one card over, and one card has to go. The near-universal solution is to remove a low one before the deal so that fifty-one cards go out seventeen at a time. The two of clubs is the conventional victim, though the two of diamonds and the two of hearts are both used and neither is wrong.","Removing a low side-suit card preserves all thirteen spades and is the setup used in this guide. Other house rules may remove a different card, including a spade; that changes the trump count and must be agreed before the deal.","Another method is to deal seventeen cards each from the full deck and set the last card aside face down. Each player still has seventeen cards, but the missing card may now be a spade, so the suit counts and available winners can differ from a fixed removal. Agree on that method before bidding.",{"heading":18,"paragraphs":19},"The Full Three-Handed Rule Set",[20,21,22,23],"Fifty-one cards, three players, seventeen cards each, seventeen tricks per hand. Spades are trump. You must follow suit if you can. Nobody may lead a spade until spades have been broken by a ruff or until a player holds nothing else.","Bidding starts with the player to the dealer's left and moves clockwise. Every player bids for themselves and the three bids do not have to add up to seventeen. There are no partners, no team totals and nobody to share the blame with.","Scoring is standard: make your bid and score ten points a trick plus one point for each overtrick, miss it and lose ten points a trick bid. Nil is normally worth one hundred and costs one hundred when broken. Ten accumulated bags cost one hundred points, and unlike the partnership game those bags belong to you alone.","Five hundred is the usual target. Because each hand contains seventeen tricks rather than thirteen, hands take longer and score higher, so plenty of groups drop the target to three hundred for a session that finishes in reasonable time.",{"heading":25,"paragraphs":26},"Bidding Seventeen Tricks Between Three People",[27,28,29,30],"Seventeen tricks divided three ways is a shade under six, so an average hand is a five or six bid rather than the three you would call at a four-player table. Players arriving from partnership Spades almost always underbid their first few three-handed hands by two or three tricks.","Trump counts run higher too. Thirteen spades across three hands averages out at four and a third each, against three and a quarter in the four-player game. Holding five spades is ordinary here and holding seven is a hand you can build a big bid around, because the remaining six are split between only two opponents.","Long side suits are the other thing that changes. With seventeen cards you regularly hold six or seven of something. If you have seven hearts, the other six are divided between two hands, so your fourth heart is often already a winner and the suit runs for several tricks before anyone can ruff. In four-player Spades that same seven-card suit dies much sooner. Count long-suit length as real tricks here, not as hope.","Nil is markedly harder. You have seventeen cards to keep clean instead of thirteen, and both opponents profit from busting you with nobody obliged to protect you. Some tables raise nil to a hundred and fifty to compensate for the difficulty. Most simply leave it at a hundred and see very few successful ones.",{"heading":32,"paragraphs":33},"The Two-On-One Dynamic Nobody Warns You About",[34,35,36,37],"There are no partners, but there are constant temporary alliances, and they form without anyone saying a word. If you bid seven and both opponents bid four, they have a shared interest in setting you and no reason at all to protect each other's overtricks. Two players quietly working against one is the normal state of a three-handed hand.","The scoreboard drives it. Once somebody crosses four hundred, the other two start playing to set that player rather than to maximise their own score, because second place pays nothing. This is not collusion, it is just correct play, and you should expect it rather than complain about it.","The strategic response is to bid in a way that makes setting you expensive for the people trying. A bid of eight invites the whole table to spend the hand attacking you. A bid of five with a hand that can take seven collects two bags, keeps you off the radar, and lets somebody else absorb the pressure. Many strong three-handed players deliberately sit in second place until the last two hands and then convert.","The reverse also holds. When you are in last place nobody bothers to set you, which makes a big bid from behind far safer than the same bid from in front. Aggression is cheap when you are not the threat.",{"heading":39,"paragraphs":40},"Card Play Adjustments For A Seventeen-Card Hand",[41,42,43,44],"Every trick is contested by three cards instead of four, so second-best cards win far more often. Kings lead and hold. Queens survive. The general effect is that your middle cards are worth more than your partnership instincts suggest.","Counting is genuinely easy here, and it is the biggest edge available. You see seventeen of the fifty-one cards, which leaves thirty-four unknown cards split between two hands. Once a player shows out of a suit, you know the exact location of every remaining card in it. Two hands is a workload you can actually carry through seventeen tricks.","Trump management is the whole endgame. With everybody holding four or five spades, two rounds of trump leads strip most of the table, and whoever still has spades at trick fourteen takes the rest. The last four or five tricks of a three-handed hand are almost always pure trump, so budget for that and do not spend your last spade winning a trick you had already bid for.","If you stripped the two of clubs, clubs is a twelve-card suit and voids appear there marginally sooner. Leading clubs to force a ruff out of an opponent who is short is a small but real edge, and one that only exists because of how the deck was adjusted.",{"heading":46,"paragraphs":47},"When Three-Handed Beats Filling The Fourth Seat",[48,49,50],"Three is the most common awkward number in card games, and the alternatives are worse than they look. Adding a computer player to make a four-handed partnership game means one human is stuck with a partner they cannot talk to and whose bidding they cannot influence, which is the single least enjoyable seat in Spades.","Three-handed keeps all three humans playing every hand for their own score. Nobody is carried, nobody is blamed, and the two-on-one dynamic gives it a negotiating texture the partnership game does not have.","The cost is time. Seventeen tricks a hand is a third longer than thirteen, so a game to five hundred is a real commitment. Drop the target if the session is short, and agree before the first deal on which card you are stripping so that nobody discovers it mid-hand.",[52,55,58,61,64],{"q":53,"a":54},"Which card do you remove for three-player Spades?","This guide removes the two of clubs, leaving fifty-one cards for seventeen each. Other tables remove a different card or leave one random card face down. Keeping all spades preserves thirteen trumps; removing a spade changes that count, so agree on the setup first.",{"q":56,"a":57},"How many cards does each player get in three-handed Spades?","Seventeen, and there are seventeen tricks in each hand. That is four more cards and four more tricks than the standard four-player deal, which is why average bids run around five or six rather than three.",{"q":59,"a":60},"Do you play with partners in three-player Spades?","No. Every player bids, plays and scores for themselves, exactly as in cutthroat. Temporary alliances against whoever is leading the game are normal and expected, but they are informal and last only as long as the shared interest does.",{"q":62,"a":63},"Is nil still worth one hundred points?","In most rooms, yes. It is considerably harder to make than in the four-player game because you hold seventeen cards to keep clean and both opponents want you busted with nobody covering you. Some tables raise it to one hundred and fifty to reflect that.",{"q":65,"a":66},"What do you play to in three-handed Spades?","Five hundred is standard, but seventeen-trick hands score faster and take longer, so three hundred is a common house target for a shorter session. Agree on it before the first deal along with which card is being stripped.",{"example":68,"sources":69,"related":81},null,[70,76],{"url":71,"title":72,"publisher":73,"note":74,"language":75},"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.pagat.com\u002Fauctionwhist\u002Fspades.html","Spades","Pagat, John McLeod","Three players without partnerships, 17 cards each with one card out of play, individual bids and scores, and targets such as 300 or 500 points.","en",{"url":77,"title":78,"publisher":79,"note":80,"language":75},"https:\u002F\u002Fen.wikipedia.org\u002Fwiki\u002FSpades_(card_game)","Spades (card game)","Wikipedia","Three-handed Spades with no partnerships and 17 cards each, the two of clubs usually being the card removed.",[82,86,89,92],{"path":83,"title":84,"english":85},"\u002Fspades\u002Fcutthroat-spades","Cutthroat Spades",false,{"path":87,"title":88,"english":85},"\u002Fspades\u002F2-player-spades","How to Play Spades with 2 People: Draw-and-Discard Rules",{"path":90,"title":91,"english":85},"\u002Fspades\u002Fhow-many-players-in-spades","How Many Players Do You Need for Spades?",{"path":93,"title":94,"english":85},"\u002Fspades\u002Frules","Spades: Rules"]