Read your partner in Spades

By Marya · Updated by Holger in September 2026

Sometimes you get "out of sync" with your partner. It's most likely to happen the first time you play with someone, but it also happens to people who have played together for years. For example, you might be playing your cards to set the opponents while your partner is throwing away tricks to avoid collecting bags. Your partner isn't a mind reader, so don't get angry when this happens! Instead, try to read the cards they play and look for clues to what they're planning.

Here's a hand from a game of Spades where the bids add up to 11 and I'm hoping to set the opponents. Some players never try to set when the total bid is 11. Others always try. Some go either way, depending on the strength of their hand and on what happens as the cards are played. Here's how the first few tricks went.

Our opponents take an early trick with the Queen of Clubs. That's bad news for my plan to set, since they probably didn't count that trick when they bid. It's less common to count a Queen when bidding. But I haven't changed my mind. I'll still try to set.

Right after that, my partner trumps the opponent's Ace of Clubs. That's good for an attempt to set. It probably means our opponents lost a trick they were counting on. It's also a clue that my partner is in sync with my plan to set.

But right after that, an opponent trumps my partner's Ace of Diamonds! Now I start to worry that we will get set. My partner surely counted that Ace when he made his bid. If he has a weak hand, he may find it hard to make his bid.

By the 8th trick, our opponents had already made their bid, so setting them was out of the question. From then on, my team's goal was to make our bid first and then to avoid taking bags if we could. We managed both.

Notice how I was "reading" my partner throughout this hand. You can't always be sure what they're thinking, since you don't know what cards they hold. But you can make educated guesses. You'll win more games if you make an effort to stay in tune with your partner.