Hey y'all, and welcome to my table. I'm Deborah Bracy, and if you've played Spades on the Zone after 9 o'clock at night, there's a good chance I've set you. Sorry. Not really.

By day I process claims for an insurance company here in Atlanta, which means I spend eight hours making sure the numbers add up. By night I do the exact same thing, except with books and bags, and it's a whole lot more fun.

I learned Spades the way most of us did, at family reunions, sitting on a folding chair next to my grandmother and watching her take my uncles' money. (Pennies, mostly. Mostly.) I was nine before anybody let me hold a hand and fifteen before anybody let me bid it. Now I play most nights on the MSN Gaming Zone, usually with my partner of two years, RetiredRedPen, a retired schoolteacher in Detroit. I have never seen her face. I couldn't pick her out of a line at the grocery store. But I know exactly what she means when she bids four, and that's more than I can say for some people I'm related to.

Four players, two teams, partners sit across from each other. The whole deck gets dealt, thirteen cards each. Everybody bids how many tricks they think they'll take. In Spades a trick is called a book. You and your partner add your bids together, and that's what your team has to make.

Whoever's left of the dealer leads, and everybody has to follow suit if they can. Highest card of the suit led takes the book, unless somebody plays a spade. Spades are always trump. Always. That's the whole name of the game.

First team to 500 wins.

If you make your bid, you get 10 points for every book you bid. If my partner and I bid seven between us and we take seven, that's 70 points. Pretty.

If you don't make your bid, you're set, and you lose 10 points for every book you bid. Bid seven, take six, and that's minus 70. Ugly.

Any books you take over your bid are worth one point each. Those are bags, and they are not your friends. Keep reading.

Every bag is a point now, but the bags pile up from hand to hand, and when your team gets to ten bags, you lose 100 points. Then you start counting bags again from zero.

So a team that sandbags every hand, bidding low to be safe, is going to get hit with that hundred sooner or later, usually right when they're about to win. I have watched it happen at 480. I have made it happen at 480. You can set a team without setting their bid: just keep feeding them books they didn't ask for.

You can't lead a spade until spades have been broken, which means somebody has played one on a trick because they couldn't follow suit. The only exception is when all you've got left in your hand is spades. Then lead away, baby.

Once spades are broken, anybody can lead them, and that's when the person sitting on the ace and king of spades starts smiling.

Nil means you bid zero. You are promising not to take a single book. Make it and your team gets 100 points. Take even one and you lose 100. Your partner's bid still counts on its own, so your partner has to make their books and protect you, by playing over you when you're in trouble. When a nil goes down, it's usually because somebody had a lonely king and was hoping for the best.

Blind nil means you bid nil before you look at your cards. That's worth 200 points if you make it, and you lose 200 if you don't. Most people only allow a blind nil when your team is behind by 100 or more, and they're right. It's a desperation move. I've made exactly four in my life and I remember every one.

Everybody counts their hand a little different. This is how I do it, and it has done me fine.

♠ Aces are a book. Count one for each, except an ace in a suit where you've got six or seven cards. Somebody's going to trump it the second time around.

♠ Kings are a book if they've got company. A king with one or two little cards behind it, count it. A king all by itself is a coin flip, and I don't bid coin flips.

♠ Queens are a maybe. Count a queen only if you've got three cards in the suit and the ace or king to go with it.

♠ Spades are where the books are. The ace and king of spades are sure things. After that, count one book for every spade past your third. Four spades, one extra book. Five spades, two.

♠ Short suits plus spades equals books. If you've got no clubs at all and three or four spades, you're going to be trumping clubs. Add one.

♠ Listen to the table. If you're bidding last and the other three bids already add up to eleven, there aren't many books left out there. Don't be greedy. If they add up to six, somebody's been shy, and you can push.

♠ When in doubt, take the bag. A bag costs you a point now and maybe a hundred later. A set costs you right now. I'd rather eat a bag than get set, every time.

♠ Don't bid nil with the ace or king of spades, or more than three spades. I don't care how pretty your other cards are.