Card Games Like Spades

Are you a fan of a classic trick-taking game like Spades? If you want to add some new games to your repertoire, you’re in the right place.

Bridge, Euchre, and Rummy are popular card games similar to Spades. However, one of the more popular games that is often compared to Spades is Hearts.

If you’re interested in Hearts, play it online at Hearts.co. Our platform aims to make this popular trick-taking game fun and let you easily develop your skills!

Exploring the World of Hearts

Unlike Spades, the goal of Hearts is to avoid certain cards rather than win them. Cards with the Hearts suit or the dreaded Queen of Spades can put you in a losing position.

What’s the meaning of the Queen of Spades or the Hearts suit? Each one carries a specific amount of penalty points. Knowing how scoring works in Hearts is key to successfully playing the game. The lower your score the better chance you have of winning. More specifically:

• Hearts: Cards of this suit will net you one point each.
• Queen of Spades: The Queen of Spades can be a doozy, clocking in at a rough thirteen points.

If you succeed at shooting the moon, your opponents face a hefty twenty-six points added to their scores. Shooting the moon means you purposely try to collect every Hearts card and the Queen of Spades. It’s a high-risk, high-reward strategy. If you succeed, it can lead to quite the payoff.

Other Popular Trick-Taking Games

While Hearts is one of the more popular trick-taking games, others commonly played are:

• Bridge: Bridge is a card game where teams of two try to win as many tricks as possible. It’s a game of strategy consisting of four phases: dealing cards, bidding to take the contract, exchanging information through bids, and playing the cards. The declaring side tries to fulfill their contract by winning their specified number of tricks. Defenders actively look to stop that from happening. Scoring is based on contract fulfillment and the number of tricks taken.
• Rummy: Rummy is one of the most popular games in the world. Dealers give each player their cards, and the remaining stock cards are placed in a pile with the top card turned up. Each player aims for sets of three or four of a kind or sequences of three or more cards of the same suit. A player calls ‘rummy’ when they get rid of all cards in their hands at once, without having to put down any cards in the discard pile.
• Euchre: Best played in groups of four, Euchre is a trick-taking game won with at least three tricks. Euchre can be played with special decks or a standard fifty-two-card deck pared down to thirty-two, twenty-eight, or twenty-four cards. The card on the top of the discard pile is used as the starting trump suit. Once the trump suit is fixed or chosen by players, the team that chose the trump suit is considered ‘euchred’ if they don’t win three tricks. Winning all five tricks is known as a ‘march’.

Playing Trick-Taking Games Online

You don’t need a pack of cards or people in the room to play a trick-taking game like Spades or Hearts. You can easily play online and practice from anywhere on Hearts.co. Playing online at Hearts.co is a great way to familiarize yourself with games you may not have played before. Try it today!