How ranked Spades games work

By Marya · Updated by Holger in September 2026

Ranked Spades games track how often you win and how well you play. This page explains the two ratings I keep and the rules that keep ranked games fair.

Elo ratings and skill

Ranked tables were added to Spades at World of Card Games on April 10, 2016. They're similar to Hearts rankings. But Spades is played in teams, so the rankings have to be computed differently.

A ranked game is like a regular game, except that your Elo rating and skill rating are recorded when the game ends. The rules are also stricter. If you can play ranked games, choose "Play ranked" in the Spades menu on the home page, or "Join ranked table" in the menu on the Spades game page. In the list of open tables, ranked tables have their own mark.

The Elo rating system is described on Wikipedia. Many online games use it to rank players. I use it because almost everyone else does!

It takes many skills to play Spades well. When I was learning to play, the thing I found hardest was setting an opponent's nil bid. A nil bid can really throw you off your game. So to encourage people, especially non-experts, to try to set nil bids, I've added a "skill rating" to ranked games. Your skill rating is the number of times you set an opponent's nil bid, divided by the number of times an opponent bid nil. In unusual cases, trying to set a nil bid instead of making your own bid can work against you. Remember that the main goals are to have fun and to win, in that order.

Rules

These are the rules about who can play a ranked game:

• Only registered players can take part.
• You must be "experienced" at the site. That just means you've finished 10 games. It gives you a chance to get to know the site before you play a more serious ranked game.
• Spades must be turned on under "Leaderboards" in your settings. It's on by default.
• Bots can't sit at a ranked table when the game starts, but they can be invited if someone drops out. (I'd like to ban bots altogether, but for now it's too hard to get players to sit at a no-bots table, even when the game has barely started. I may change this rule later.)

There are also rules about how you play a ranked game:

• If you quit a ranked table before the game is over, you're banned from ranked Spades games for 1 hour.
• If you turn Spades off under "Leaderboards", you're banned from ranked Spades games for 1 week. Your Elo rating is also reset to the default value (1500).

If a player quits a ranked table, other players can join as substitutes. Substitutes aren't ranked, so for them it's just an ordinary game. If you quit a ranked table, it counts as a forfeit for you. Your partner isn't affected and may even go on to win. Sometimes a player drops out by accident, perhaps because of a computer problem. If you drop out but come back to the site within 3 minutes, you'll be put back in your ranked game automatically.

You can see your Elo rating and skill rating in your stats. Open the menu on your avatar in the top right corner, choose "Statistics", and pick Spades. This is how it looked in 2016:

When you hover over a player in the list of open tables, you'll see their Elo rating if they've been ranked.

How Elo ratings are computed

Wikipedia does a pretty good job of explaining how Elo ratings are computed. It gives this example of someone playing in a 5-round tournament:

Suppose Player A has a rating of 1613, and plays in a five-round tournament. He or she loses to a player rated 1609, draws with a player rated 1477, defeats a player rated 1388, defeats a player rated 1586, and loses to a player rated 1720. The player's actual score is (0 + 0.5 + 1 + 1 + 0) = 2.5. The expected score, calculated according to the formula above, was (0.506 + 0.686 + 0.785 + 0.539 + 0.351) = 2.867. Therefore the player's new rating is (1613 + 32 * (2.5 − 2.867)) = 1601, assuming that a K-factor of 32 is used.

At World of Card Games, the process is very similar. Each player's result against each opponent at the table counts as one "round" of a tournament like the one above. Here's an example for a game of Spades.

Suppose 4 players called A, B, C, and D have ratings of 1512, 1562, 1484, and 1417. A and C are partners. B and D are the other team. The "expected" score for player A against player B is 1 / (1 + 10^((Rb_avg − Ra_avg)/400)). Rb_avg is the average Elo rating of team B and D, which is (Rb + Rd)/2. Ra_avg is the average for team A and C, which is (Ra + Rc)/2. Using the average rating spreads the team's performance more evenly, especially when the two partners have very different skills. In this example, Rb_avg is 1489.5 and Ra_avg is 1498.

In Elo, a player's actual score is 1 for a win, 0.5 for a draw, and 0 for a loss. If player A beat player B, player A's actual score would be 1.

In a Spades game, each player is rated against the two players on the other team. If players A and C beat B and D, player A's "actual" score is Sa = 1 + 1 = 2. Player A's expected score is 1 / (1 + 10^((Rb_avg − Ra_avg)/400)), added up once for each player on the other team. So Ea = 1 / (1 + 10^((1489.5 − 1498)/400)) + 1 / (1 + 10^((1489.5 − 1498)/400)). It's not a mistake to add the same number twice. The computation is done once for each "match" against your two opponents. The total is about 1.024. You can plug the formula into Google, which will work it out for you.

Player A's new Elo rating comes from the formula on Wikipedia, Ra' = Ra + K * (Sa − Ea), where Ra is their current rating of 1512. At World of Card Games, the Elo K factor is 25 for all players, much like at other game sites. So Ra' = 1512 + 25 * (2 − 1.024). Google's handy calculator says that's 1536, the player's new rating.

The same computation is made for players B, C, and D. Each player's new rating starts from their own Elo rating. The expected score uses the two team averages.

If you're curious, the Wikipedia article has more details. Of course, a rating system built for chess has flaws when you use it for a card game like Spades. Most game sites use it anyway, so I've followed suit.

You may want to try the Elo rating calculator for team games to get a feel for how points pass between players in a Spades game.

Why aren't quitters penalized extra?

In Hearts, your Elo rating suffers more if you quit a game, because you automatically lose to every remaining player. Spades doesn't do this. For one thing, rating a player against their own partner when they quit seems too strange. The quitter would be matched against three players, but the opponents would only be matched against two. That would skew the ratings. I've also had a few complaints about how quitting a Hearts game affects a player's Elo. Some people say that losing the game is penalty enough. They feel they shouldn't also take a loss against every remaining player. So Elo ratings in Spades don't add an extra penalty for quitting. It's an experiment to see whether quitting needs a heavier penalty.

Example when a player quits

Suppose 4 players, each rated 1500, start a ranked Spades game. Mary and Sue are partners against John and Peter. Halfway through the game, Peter realizes he has to rush off to pick up his kids from school. He apologizes and leaves the table. His Elo rating drops at once from 1500 to 1475. He's also banned from ranked play for 1 hour. His new rating comes from the formula Ra' = Ra + K * (Sa − Ea) = 1500 + 25 * (0 − 1) = 1475.

The other players' Elo ratings don't change until the game is finished. Now suppose John, whose partner quit, goes on to win the game. Mary and Sue are rated as winning against Peter but losing to John, so their Elo ratings stay at 1500. For example, Mary "won" against Peter (because he quit) and lost to John, so Mary's Sa = 1 + 0 = 1. Mary's Ea is also 1. So Ra' = Ra + K * (Sa − Ea) = 1500 + 25 * (1 − 1) = 1500.

Finally, John wins his 2 matches against Sue and Mary. His Sa = 1 + 1 = 2. His Elo rating becomes Ra + K * (Sa − Ea) = 1500 + 25 * (2 − 1) = 1525.