Partners and the deal
Four players, two partnerships, partners sitting across from each other. Shuffle and deal the whole deck one card at a time to the left, thirteen each. Look at your hand; never show it, never tilt it, never sigh at it. The deal moves one seat to the left every hand. Spades are trump for the entire game — that never changes and is never chosen.
Objective
Together with your partner, win exactly as many tricks as the two of you said you would. Do that hand after hand until your side reaches five hundred points.
How it's played
Card ranking
In every suit, cards rank 2 low up through 10, Jack, Queen, King, Ace high. Any spade beats any card of any other suit, no matter how small the spade or how large the other card. Between two spades, the higher spade wins.
The bid
Starting to the dealer's left and going around once, each player says out loud how many tricks they expect to win. You may bid anything from zero to thirteen. Your partnership's contract is the two bids added together — if you say four and your partner says three, your side is trying to win exactly seven. You may not discuss it. No hints, no faces, no "I'm feeling good about this one." You hear your partner's number when everyone else does, and that ignorance is the game.
Playing a trick
The player to the dealer's left leads the first trick. Everyone else, going left, must play a card of the suit that was led if they hold one. If you're out of that suit, play anything — including a spade, which is how you take a trick you had no business taking. The highest spade played wins the trick. If no spade was played, the highest card of the led suit wins. The winner gathers the four cards face down in front of their side and leads the next trick. Keep your side's won tricks in a stack somebody can count, because somebody will.
Breaking spades
You may not lead a spade until spades have been broken — until someone has played a spade on a trick led in another suit. The one exception is a player holding nothing but spades, who has no choice and leads whatever they've got. After the first spade hits the table, spades may be led freely for the rest of the hand.
Nil
Bidding nil means you intend to win no tricks at all. Say "nil" in your turn to bid; your partner bids a number as usual, and that number alone is your side's contract. If you finish the hand having taken nothing, your side gains one hundred points. Take even one trick and your side loses one hundred, and every trick you took counts as a bag against you. Your partner's bid is scored separately either way, made or missed on its own. Your partner will spend the hand throwing away high cards to cover you. That is allowed, that is the point, and neither of you may say a word about it.
Scoring
Making the bid
At the end of the hand, count the tricks your side won and compare them to your contract. Made it: ten points per trick you bid. A contract of seven is seventy points. Missed it: ten points lost per trick you bid, and nothing for the tricks you did win. Bid seven, take six, lose seventy. Taking more than you bid does not earn more than the contract. The extras are bags, and bags are a debt.
Bags
Every trick you take beyond your contract is a bag: one point now, and a problem later. Each bag adds a single point to your score and one mark to your side's bag count. The tenth bag costs your side one hundred points and clears the count back to zero. This is why a good player will deliberately give away a trick they could win. Overbidding loses hands; underbidding loses games.
Reneging and table talk
Reneging is failing to follow the led suit when you held a card in it. If it's caught before the hand's cards are gathered up, the play is corrected and the hand continues. If it's caught after, the hand is over: the offending side is scored as having missed its contract, and the other side is scored as having made theirs. Table talk is any hint about your hand outside your bid — a comment, a groan, a pointed look at a partner. There's no formal penalty, because there's no formal way to measure it. The table calls it out loud and the offender takes the point: play the hand straight or don't play. A card dropped face up stays face up and gets played the next time it's legal to.
Five hundred
The first side to five hundred points wins, counted at the end of a hand — you never stop mid-hand. A side that falls to two hundred points below zero loses on the spot, which happens more often than new players expect and is usually a nil's fault. If both sides cross five hundred in the same hand, the higher score wins; if that's tied, deal another hand. Some tables play to two hundred for a short night, and some play a set number of hands and take the high score. Say which before the first deal.
Make it yours
Every court answers these differently. The rulebook above is one honest baseline — these are the calls that make it yours.
Play to 500, 300, or a fixed number of hands?
The length of the night, decided in one number.
Bags at ten for −100, or bags don't matter?
Dropping bags entirely makes a looser, friendlier game — and a worse one, some would say loudly.
Blind nil allowed?
Bidding nil before you look, for double the points, is the most common addition to this game.
Jokers in as the top two trumps?
Plenty of tables play with them, drawing two low cards out to keep the deal even.
Does a renege cost the hand or the game?
The harsh version — a set plus a hundred — exists, and tables that play it never argue twice.
The prose is the game. Every change here is saved as a new version, and every match ever played pins the exact rules it was played under.