Common Spades Mistakes

A holding of Q-J-9 in hearts is not a trick. A queen only wins when both the ace and king are gone or badly placed, and in a trump game she is often ruffed before she ever gets the chance. Players who count picture cards as if the pictures were the point routinely bid 5 on a hand worth 3, and a miss by one costs a 90-point swing against simply bidding the right number.

The fix is a fixed valuation rule. Count an ace as a full trick. Count a king as a trick only when you also hold at least one small card in that suit to protect it, so K-6 counts and a lone king does not. Count a queen only when you hold a higher honour in the same suit, as in A-Q-4. Everything else is a maybe, and maybes do not go into the bid.

Holding A-K-5-3-2 of spades, players reason: ace, king, plus three long spades, that is five tricks. It is not. The ace and the king are two of those five spades, so they have been counted once as honours and again as length. The same double count happens with A-Q-9-6 and with K-J-8-4-3, and it is the most common single reason a team total comes out too high.

Count spades one way only. Add up the top spades you actually hold, then add one trick for each spade beyond the fourth, because those are the ones still alive when the other three players have run out. On that method A-K-5-3-2 is worth about three, sometimes four if the hand also has a side-suit void. Rounding that number down is the habit that stops a partnership from being set every third hand.

Leading the ace of hearts on the opening trick wins one trick and tells everyone what you hold for free, and it very often crashes into your partner's king of the same suit, turning two tricks into one. The bigger cost is the entry. Aces are how you get the lead back later, and later is when the lead is worth something - covering a nil, cutting off a long suit, or choosing what the opponents have to follow.

Lead a low card from your longest side suit instead, and keep the aces for the middle of the hand. There is one real exception: when the opponents have bid heavily and clearly hold long trumps, your side-suit aces are living on borrowed time, and cashing them early is the only way they will ever win a trick.

Your partner leads the ace of clubs, you are void in clubs, and you ruff with the four of spades. You have just spent a trump to win a trick your team had already won, and you will miss that trump three tricks later. The same error wears other clothes: overtaking your partner's winning king with your ace, or ruffing in front of the trick when nobody dangerous is left to play.

Before every card, ask a one-second question: who is winning this trick right now? If the answer is your partner and no opponent is left to play after them, throw your lowest card from your least useful suit. That habit alone is worth roughly a trick a hand to most intermediate players.

Bags feel free when they arrive, because each one adds a point. They are not free. Ten accumulated bags cost 100 points and take ten off the counter, so a team that takes two spare tricks a hand loses 100 points every five hands - more than an entire made contract, handed back for tricks nobody needed.

The fix has two halves. In play, once your team's contract is safe, start losing tricks on purpose: play under, refuse the ruff, do not overtake. In bidding, read the bag column before you speak, not after the penalty lands. A team on eight bags should bid the full value of its hand rather than shading down, because a made five-bid absorbs a trick that would have been a bag on a four-bid.

The classic bad nil is a hand with a singleton king. Being short in a suit feels safe, but a singleton must be played the first time that suit is led, and a singleton honour will simply win the trick. Four or more spades is the other nil-killer: once the side suits are exhausted, somebody leads trumps and the nil bidder is thrown in with a spade nobody else can beat.

The partner's error is quieter and just as expensive. Bidding a normal number over your partner's nil and then playing a normal hand forgets that the nil is worth 100 points and your own contract is worth 40. Take the lead early, lead high cards so your partner can throw the dangerous ones away underneath them, and stop handing the lead back to the opponents who are trying to force a trick on them.

Reneging - failing to follow the led suit when you actually hold a card of it - is the most expensive rules mistake in the game. Table penalties vary, but the two most common are transferring three tricks to the opponents or setting the offending team outright for the hand. Our tables, like most online games, simply refuse the illegal card; at a kitchen table nobody refuses anything, the penalty stands, and it usually decides the game.

Leading a spade before spades are broken is the other rules slip. It is illegal unless spades are the only cards left in your hand. If you find yourself holding nothing but spades at trick six, that is rarely bad luck - usually you threw away your side-suit cards too fast in the earlier tricks and lost control of what you would be able to lead.