Talk:Spades (card game)

References Added

I added references to Pagat, Spadeology and Rubl, which are trusted card game rules sites. and to HowStuffWorks which is marginal in some cases but looks accurate for Spades. Feel free to add additional references and to tag additional citations from the existing refs. Avoid eHow and About.com. The article needs a few more inline tags, but don't go overboard; 90% of what is shown as the "basic rules" is common among all four refs currently used, so one or two cites at the end of each section whose information is supposted by a reference is fine. I went ahead and removed the banner (finally; been there for a year and a half). Maybe this article is due for a review and to-do list so we can get it to GA status?Liko81 (talk) 15:22, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Simplest?

Is Spades really "the simplest of the Whist family"? Is that really measurable? The Hearts page says that hearts is suitable for younger children than Spades is. Am I missing something?69.76.145.26 (talk) 23:26, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Of the commonly-played trick-taking games descended from Whist, which is a pretty simple game, Spades is the closest (it's pretty much Bid Whist with static trump). I do agree that Hearts strategy is simpler than Spades (just don't win any tricks) but I think Hearts is more complex for two reasons; first, the scoring is "point-trick" (it's the contents of the tricks, not the number of them, that counts) which makes scoring a Hearts hand at least somewhat more complex, and the object of Hearts is exactly opposite of virtually every other Whist variant, making it a "black sheep" of sorts when compared to the rest of the family, albeit a very popular one. I'm willing to entertain discussion; the statement that it was the simplest Whist variant was there before my major reorg. if I can find an independent source that backs up that claim I'll let you know, otherwise we can further qualify that statement ("among the simplest" or "the simplest contract-type Whist variant") or just ix-nay it.Liko81 (talk) 13:53, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism

A user seems to be persistently adding content concerning Internet play and plugging a particular book. This user clearly has very strong opinions about spades and spades players. This content is blatantly inappropriate for Wikipedia. This is not just my opinion, since the changes in question have been reverted many times by many people.

To that user, I would ask that prior to reintroducing your changes, please discuss and defend your changes here so that a consensus can be reached.

---

Critique of the disputed content:

"Most online spaders are not good, think they are good, and are not willing to learn."

Can you imagine this in a printed encyclopedia? This is your opinion of other people. This is a put down. It is not an undisputed fact. Even if it were an undisputed fact it would not belong in an encyclopedia entry about Spades.

"Steve Fleishman changed the Spades world when he released the first of his two books"

He may have changed YOUR world.

"It introduced players to Spades the way it should be played."

It is not an encyclopedia's job to tell people how they should live their life or play their games.

"Serious players are advised to visit Fleishman's website and enjoy the plethora of free information available."

And you claim this is not a plug?!?

Please, please read the section "Wikipedia is not a propaganda machine" at this page.

Karmafist's 2 cents regarding Spades

It's not particularly encyclopedic, but this is a talk page, so I figured I'd add my perceptions and rules from playing Spades here.

• Bidding Nil is a risk, but it's a risk that has to be taken when it can be taken.
  

Don't bid nil if...

• • You have more than 2 spades or a spade face card
  • It's the first hand and you have any face cards(getting behind early is bad)
  • If you have more than 5-7 face cards total
  • If you're way ahead and it's not almost definate

Do bid nil if...

• • You have no face cards at all
  • You're behind by more than 200
  • Your partner bids high(6 or more)
• Bags are bad if you get two or three per hand, but no big deal if you get one. Remember, bags are cumulative per partners.
• When bidding, I usually give this value to my cards in total
  • 1 trick for each spade face card
  • 1 trick for each spade when I have a doubleton or less in a suit
  • 1-2 tricks if I have more than 5 spades
  • 1 trick per ace
  • 1/4-1/2 trick per non-spade face card, depending on the situation
• Know how your partner plays, and then change how you play to react. If they're aggressive, go more cautious. If they're cautious, go more aggressive. You're playing your partner's tendancies as much as your opponents.
• When trying to break a nil, do so usually on the second or third trick of each suit. The first trick is usually easy to break, and by the fourth, the niller is usually out of that suit or the covering partner has reached into spades. Keep track of where the niller and partner is weak and strong! When covering, remember the reverse, and try to get rid of your low cards as soon as possible once you know your partner is safe.

Slang

There should be a section on slang terms commonly used, such as "bumping," and "book" instead of "trick."

Basic Game Play Clarification

I know nothing of spades. I didn't understand the sentence "There is a variation where the object is not to lose - the loser having an amusing penalty." Would this be a specific "amusing" penalty, or is it a penalty agreed upon before game play starts that tends to be amusing? I tried to find this defined elsewhere in the article and was unsuccessful. It would be helpful to clarify the sentence with additional information Gramby 05:12, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

The sentence is worded badly. Isn't the object of any game not to lose? As far as having amusing penalties -- it's not an intrinsic property of Spades. Any people playing any game can choose any amusing penalty for the loser. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.42.97.144 (talk) 15:22, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Revisions & Restructuring

I love playing Spades and I would love to take part in a major restructuring of this Spades page. It seems as though there is a lot of information on this page, but the current layout leaves something to be desired. How do all of you feel about this idea? Iheartcorruption 04:40, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree that this page is in serious need of restructuring. It is not at all easy to read for someone who does not know the game and is just trying to figure out the basic rules. All of the lists of variations in bidding, scoring, game play and so on really break up the flow of the article. Perhaps a better way of structuring the article would be to completely describe the basic rules, and then have a separate section on variants. this web site does approximately that, and is in my opinion much more comprehensible than this article. Zoicon5 22:56, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

This sounds like a great plan, and following the layout of the page you linked to seems like an excellent idea. I propose

(1) Introduction (2) History (3) Gameplay (4) Scoring (5) Strategy (6) Variations

Ill look it over and come up with something, and anyone else that has suggestions for the structure should speak up Iheartcorruption 09:43, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree. The page is an unusable mess at present. What it needs most is a coherent account of the rules of one version of the game, without advice on strategy, without descriptions of variants, and without mention of etiquette. Once the reader has some idea what the rules are, these subsidiary things can follow; but while he can't obtain even that, they are useless. Maproom (talk) 13:00, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. Jon (talk) 17:35, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I gave it a whirl; duplicate variants were removed, and all but the most common variants were moved to another section, ordered by the are of the game they affect most (dealing, bidding, trump, gameplay, and scoring). I also cleaned up the intro paragraph. The next step is to further wikify it and to get some inline references.Liko81 (talk) 20:19, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

"Urban Rules"

The variation for "Urban Rules" states: "all rules are disregarded". This is obviously wrong. If all rules were disregarded, there would be no game. It becomes a speed contest to see who can get 7 books, but even the rules for taking books wouldn't exist. I could just as easily take a breath and say that's worth 7 books and I win. But the player next to me might say that their heart beat before my breath and so they win. -- 67.42.97.144 (talk) 15:27, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I changed it; the basic scoring rules are what's disregarded.Liko81 (talk) 15:22, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Scoring and "going out through the bottom"

In games I've seen, only Nil and Double Nil (called "Blind Nil" in article) are available bonus hands. Also, "Deficient Ends the Game" is also called "Going out through the bottom" and is often -300. 72.87.188.6 (talk) 06:20, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

help

It's driving me crazy. What is the term for the card you have that you know will set the other team? I can't remember it for anything!71.105.186.114 (talk) 04:47, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Pruning variations and strategy

I'm removing the following content from the article:

All variations that I've never tried, suspect have never been used in any organized event, and lack citations indicating evidence to the contrary.

The entire strategy section on the grounds that much of it is wrong (or variation/situation dependent), none of it is cited, and all of it is too incomplete to be useful. 69.221.151.26 (talk) 19:20, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Removed unsupported claim.

I removed the following text:

As of 2000, Spades is considered the #1 partnership game in the United States, surpassing Bridge. However, Bridge, Hearts, Skat and other trick-taking games remain popular and eclipse Spades in various regions and demographics of the U.S. and in other countries, especially in Europe.

The citation for the first sentence does not support the claim. The article says that Spades is the most popular game on the internet, not in the United States. I removed the second statement because it does not really make a lot of sense without the first. -- JPMcGrath (talk) 01:35, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

New Formatting

I've done some reformatting. I haven't been to this page in a long time, and I really want to thank all of you that have put time into this page to make it into this huge article. It looks fantastic and is a HUUUGE improvement over how it looked three years ago. Thank you everyone. To help out, I did some major formatting and indentation. When I first saw it an hour ago, It was all one indent, and it was really hard on the eyes. Thats my opinion though. I put some work into it (not as much as some of you have though.... you guys really know your Spades!).. so, here it is. Let me know if you're happy with it, or just hate it. I think its more legible now, but I may be biased. Thanks again to everyone that has helped out with this awesome page. Iheartcorruption (talk) 22:53, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm a rabid spades player who rarely edits this page (just vandal watch). I think you've done a great job, particularly on changing the language to be more readable. I mainly edit film related articles so I don't know about standard formatting on games, but I agree it's much easier on the eyes (and you added some rules I'd never heard of, always nice); it's certainly easier to read. Well done, you.

I've been following this page for a few years now and I've always wanted to see that strategy section work. Unfortunately there's not a lot of verifiable info from valid sources we could use, from what I can tell. I guess links to sites that offer strategy (or the various books) might work, but I'm not sure that would be the appropriate to standards and such. I know that my favorite strategy site has been added inappropriately in the past (Fleishman's site, I followed that edit war with great amusement) and I've wondered how to go about including in in the external links in a way that was valid and didn't have the POV issues of the past edits. Millahnna (mouse)talk 22:57, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm glad you're happy with the look, but I cannot take credit for most of the information that has been added over time. The only thing I did (today and over the years) was indent the sections, add suit images and clear up much of the language. I'll be happy to clean it up further, as well as trying to hunt down references for many of the variations. If you (or anyone for that matter obviously) could help find some sources for all the variations, then I think we'll be on our way. I'd love to make this card game page the single best one, beating out the Poker and Bridge pages, etc. Who knows, maybe get featured status one day? lol. Perhaps. Also, if anyone has any ideas for a few scenarios for graphics, I'm a professional designer and would love to put together a few helpful graphics. I think this, along with verifications, clean easy-to-understand language and exhaustive information would put us over the top. Any other ideas would be more than welcome! Iheartcorruption (talk) 05:39, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

I'll do some looking for sites including some of the variations. Flieshman's site mentions "duplicate spades" but it's more as a references for strategy you can learn in that variation so I don't think that'll be helpful. He has links I don't usually see turn up in google searches though so I'll take a look at those. I know the brothers who won the championship in 2008 (or was it 09, they won two or three years in a row) had their own spades site for a while, but it was a blogspot blog. I don't know if it could be referenced as a source itself, even though the boys are notable. But again they might have some useful links for us. I'll take a peek. Millahnna (mouse)talk 06:01, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, thats awesome. I'll do some work on it tonight as well. I'll scour the web and see what's available and what we can use. Also (and this never occurred to me until I just did a search) when you enter Spades on Google, it links to this article as the second hit. Then again, most searches for anything on Google do the same thing. Iheartcorruption (talk) 08:20, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Popularity Amongst the African-American Community?

Can I write a section about the popularity/History amongst the African-American community? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.159.111.98 (talk) 10:24, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

I have trimmed the above comment but in case it is in a good faith edit but I suspect no such intention! There is no reason to have a section about a game in a different community unless there is clear evidence that the game is played using a different set of rules and this is mentioned in several RS.

Tetron76 (talk) 17:36, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

-(