Help is organized in the following sections.
Spades is a 4 player, partnership, trump-based game played with a standard deck of 52 playing cards. The play is broken down into hands. Hands are played until the game is over. You form a team with the player across from you and accumulate points from each hand played. The game ends when a team reaches 500 points and the team with the highest score wins.
Each hand consists of four stages: dealing, bidding, playing, and scoring.
In the dealing stage, the cards are dealt face down evenly to all players, giving each player 13 cards.
In the bidding stage, bidding begins with the player to the left of the dealer. In most cases, the bidder will look at his cards and estimate how many tricks he will take (a trick consists of four cards played, see below). The bidder may bid any number from 0 (called nil) to 13. In a special situation, the bidder may choose to bid before looking at his cards, he may bid 'blind nil', indicating that he will take zero tricks. There are scoring bonuses to bidding and making nil or blind nil. After all players have made their bids, the hand continues to the play stage.
The play stage consists of 13 tricks. A trick consists of 4 cards, 1 card from each player. For each trick, there is a leader, a suit led, and a winner. The leader is the player who played the first card. The suit led is the suit of the card played by the leader. The winner of the trick is determined by the highest card played of the suit led, however, if a trump (spade) was played on the trick, then the winner is the highest trump.
The player to the left of the dealer begins the play stage. He may lead any card from his hand except a spade. Spades are special and cannot be led until spades have been 'broken' (meaning someone has played a spade when they did not have the suit lead). After spades have been broken, spades may be led normally just like any other suit. Play continues clockwise to the left with each player playing a card in turn. Players must play the suit lead if they have it otherwise, they may play any card from their hand.
After each player has played a card on the trick, the winning player takes the trick and places it aside until the scoring stage. This player is the leader of the next trick. The play stage continues until players have no cards left in their hands. Next, the scoring stage begins.
In the scoring stage, players count the tricks they have taken. The tricks taken are compared to the the player's and partnership's bids to determine the team scores. Each team score is determined in separately in the same manner.
The case where nil and blind nil were not bid is most common and easy to calculate. In this case, the partnership bids are added together and the partnership tricks taken are added together. These sums are compared to see if the partnership made their total bid. If they took fewer tricks than their total bid, they receive a penalty score of -10 times their bid. If they took exactly their bid, they get a score of 10 times their bid. If they took more tricks than their bid they get 10 times their bid + 1 point for each overtrick. Overtricks are known as bags and are tracked separately (in the one's digit of the score). When 10 overtricks are taken in total (across several hands), a partnership will receive a penalty of -100 points.
Here is an illustrative example. Suppose you bid 3 and took 2, partner bid 4 and took 6, then the score for your team will be 71. It does not matter that you individually did not make your bid as long as the team makes their bid.
Now for the more complex nil bids (nil and blind nil). Here the tricks the players take are treated separately. The nil (or blind nil) player is trying to take 0 tricks, any trick he takes will count as a bag and will not contribute to help partner make this non-nil bid. If a nil (or blind nil) bidder takes exactly 0 tricks, then his team gets a bonus of 100 points (200 points for blind nil). If the nil (or blind nil) player fails to take 0 tricks, the partnership will get a penalty of minus 100 points (minus 200 points for blind nil). The non-nil bidding partner is scored as if he is playing alone. The scores of both players area added together to get the score for the team.
A few examples will make this clearer. Suppose you bid nil and your partner bid 5. You take 0 tricks and your partner takes 7 tricks. You have made your nil bid, this is plus 100 points. Your partner made his bid for 52 points (2 bags). The total score for this hand is 152 points for your team.
Now, suppose you bid nil and partner bids 5. You take 3 tricks and partner takes 4 tricks. You have missed your nil bid and taken 3 overtricks. You get a score of minus 100 + 3 or minus 97 points. Your partner has missed his 5 bid for a score of minus 50 points, the tricks you took do not contribute to help partner when you make a nil bid. Your team score is -147 points for this hand.
Once the hand scoring is complete, total scores are updated by adding the hand scores to the partnership total scores. If the game is not over (did a partnership reach 500 points or -200 points?) another hand is dealt and the game continues.
NeuralPlay's Spades currently offers built-in support for the following popular spades variations. See Rule Options to configure and play additional variations.
NeuralPlay Spades offers many features to help you learn and improve your play. These features may be enabled, disabled, and/or adjusted in settings. The features include the following.
NeuralPlay computer players offer 6 levels of play. Play at level 1 is reasonably easy and good for beginners. Play at level 3 should be fun for most players. Play at level 6 will be the most challenging.
The AI bots employ different AI methods depending on the level. Levels 1 and 2 use simple methods to provide an introduction to beginners. We will not describe them in detail here.
Level 3 uses a rule-based AI. The AI consists of rules such as: "In 3rd seat, do not trump partner's high card" and "In 4th seat, play just high enough to take it when an opponent is winning", etc. We find the rules work quite well and can provide good play.
Levels 4+ use Monte Carlo Simulation to determine the best play. Basically, the AI will deal out the unknown cards randomly. The AI will then try each legal play and play the deal to the end to get a result. This is repeated for many deals of the unknown cards. The average result for each legal play is computed and the legal play with the best average result is chosen.
Levels 4+ differ in how many times the unknown cards are dealt out. In general, the more deals the more accurate the simulation. This results in better quality plays. The trade-off is that more deals take more time, play may be slower on level 6 than level 4 depending on the device.
Since levels 4+ do not use rules, you may observe either surprisingly good plays or odd mistakes that may seem not to follow any logical rules. Overall, our tests show that the levels are better than the rule-based level 3. We also find the randomness makes the computer feel a bit more human-like and fun.
If you prefer a more consistent, logical, and predictable partner AI and/or opponent AI, then level 3 may be best.
We are continuing to research improvements and new computer AI algorithms. We continue to update the bots as we develop improved algorithms.
See Settings -> Hand Sorting. You can change the rank order, suit order, and choose to alternate red and black suits.
Go to the Main Screen and choose Menu -> Reset.
These terms are used in bridge games. You are always South and your partner is always North. The terms You and South are used interchangeably.
Claim means you will take the remaining tricks. When your hand is clearly high, you may claim the remaining tricks to speed up play. If the claim is successful (the AI will check), you will receive the remaining tricks and the hand will end.
Please contact us at support@neuralplay.com.