How you play Spades is how you play life | Hacker News Reader

How you play Spades is how you play life

pudding.cool

163 pointsfeross115 comments

I (as a white American) didn't know about this history, and have played Spades as a family game for as long as I can remember.

Some interesting variations - we usually played with no Jokers, no bag, but with a negative score rule when not meeting bid. Also, a card selection mechanic if 2 players are playing - the players would alternating picking cards from from the deck, decide whether they wanted it, then keep it and discard the next card, or discard and have to keep the next card. This prevents knowing exactly what the other player has in the 2 player scenario.

I (also white American) play the same rules and was taught them by my grandfather. He said he learned the game in the Navy during WWII, but I'm not sure if that timeline lines up.

I don't know the lineage past my parents, but my grandparents did play a lot of cards (I learned Canasta from my grandmother), and my grandfather was in the Navy in WWII, so it's definitely possible.

> I learned Canasta from my grandmother

Same here, sort of: My grandmother lived several states away but would visit for several weeks during summers — and I'd have to re-learn Canasta and Hearts every visit. Right now I have not a clue how either game is played.

Can confirm that I played a lot of spades during the boring parts of my ~5 year Navy enlistment.

We always had at least one spades tournament on the mess decks for any underway more than 2 weeks.

Those are the exact rules I learned from my father as well (both of us white Americans)

Spades has long been the standard card game in the US military, which is at least partly responsible for its widespread propagation. That is where I learned it, and most other people I know either learned it in the military or from someone that was in the military.

That said, I never played it that much outside the military. These days everyone seems to play poker.

I learned Spades in the USNavy, and didn't realize that it was intimately associated with African-American culture at all. I preferred Spades, but the most popular card game (at that time, in that setting) was Euchre.

I was not aware of the association with African-American culture either. I always associated it with spending time in the military. My grandfathers knew how to play from their service in WW2.

I find it funny when people assume that something that is common within their subgroup is unique to their subgroup.

I liked that this article called out spades’ role in African American culture. But the game isn’t unique to US African American culture. So it’s interesting how it’s presented as unique or special to a particular culture or subgroup.

It would be like if I grew up in Iowa and everyone played spades, and I didn’t read the Wikipedia article or research the history of spades and thought it was a unique Iowan cultural experience. Instead of a common game places across many cultures and locations.

Do you feel the same way about when Americans claim baseball is the national pastime or say "As American as apple pie".

Do you feel differently? Why be oblique if you have a constructive point to make?

Non-American here, but I'd say yes on the apple pie, no on the baseball. I'm used to multiple countries sharing a 'national sport' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_sport) so it doesn't seem like a claim about baseball being uniquely American, so much as Americans being really into baseball. Also the sport really was developed in the US and then exported, so I think they have the right to claim some kind of spiritual ownership if they want to.

edit: looks like that last point applies in the case of African-Americans and spades, too

It doesn't have to be unique to the group to be special to the group.

Yes, that’s true. But this article presents it as if it being special to the group is unique. So the context of “this is special to my group because Xxx” to help readers understand how it’s unique.

Not in this article, but I read an account how someone’s childhood includes a tradition/habit/whatever of parents forcing their child to pick a switch to then use for beating and how it was unique to their subpopulations and region. I remembered it because I thought everyone did this and I was in a different region and subpopulations. I don’t have a chance to talk with the author, but I wonder if what they thought was unique to their family and group was actually more common.

Where do they talk about it being unique to African-American communities? Talking about something and it's place within a community is not the same as saying it's unique to a community.

“Spades is a game our ancestors created to sustain themselves, to gather, to connect, and to hold a safe space for being Black.”

This is what made me think the author assumed it was created by African Americans.

> How you play spades, is how you play life. When playing spades, you're dealt a hand and have no control over the cards you get -- unless you're cheating. Your primary goal is to play each round to the best of your abilities...

This is just "life is like a box of chocolates". I was hoping for some sort of actual prediction, where playing aggressively correlated with certain behaviors.

I was hoping for that as well. There's certainly a wide variety of play styles demonstrated by my (white, non-military, American) family and friends. Some are sandbaggers, some are risk-takers, some focus more or less on the bidding versus the actual cards being played, some prefer rule variants that add more randomness, some prefer rules that make it more tactical or information based...though I can't say I could draw a link between those game habits and real life personalities.

There was a line in there that reminded me a bit of a thing you might write in a school essay - "When playing Spades, you’re dealt a hand and have no control over the cards you get—unless you’re cheating." I'm having trouble thinking of a card game where you do get control over the cards you're dealt. Maybe there is one?

I'm reminded of a time in high school where for some reason I had to write an essay connecting Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to some more modern environmentalism ideas. These "You don't control the hand you're dealt" are exactly the kind of thing that filled those essays in school. "The monster, representing the unchecked progress of technology, causes great harm to the world..." You can just draw random connections between any two ideas if you don't limit yourself to strong, unique, or meaningful connections.

In games like Magic: The Gathering you do get to decide what possible cards you can be dealt.

And richer players have access better to cards that poorer payers can never hope to be dealt.

You do have a point, but this trope is overstated in a way that doesn't reflect reality IMO.

At a competitive level the playing field is completely level. You have to assume players have access to all the cards, otherwise games like it make zero sense.

Sure, it's an expensive game, but so are many other games and sports. It's an accessibility issue, not a balance issue: it's not like you can buy your way to victory.

Plus, you can always play sealed and draft, if you really hate constructed formats!

> It's an accessibility issue, not a balance issue: it's not like you can buy your way to victory.

It's only 'not a balance issue' because you consider access to all of the cards to be table stakes.

Right, but... it is table stakes. No-one is playing Magic seriously at high level without being in a position to buy any deck they want. (Indeed AIUI at this point top players devote a similar amount of time to a full-time job, and have teams of supporters to practice with).

You've demonstrated that only the rich can compete; not really refuting the point, is it? But limiting our attention to strictly pro-level play is a bit silly, as it ignores the overwhelming majority of players. When I was in high school, two of my friends had a lot more money than the rest of us. We'd get a few boosters of a new expansion, they'd get a case. Consequently, their decks were nigh unbeatable.

Isn't this how many online games like World-of-Warcraft work as well? You can buy success. Is that wrong? I think that's stupid from the part of the players who spend their money that way and smart from the part of the designers of the game who are laughing all the way to the bank.

But then isn't that how Football works as well. Star players get rich but who really gets rich is the company called NFL.

> You've demonstrated that only the rich can compete; not really refuting the point, is it?

You are moving the goalposts now. But anyway:

- The entire argument doesn't even apply to 50% of Magic.

- Even only considering constructed, it's objectively not the case that more money = more results. Sure, if you want to play competitively you have to dump ~1k/yr in it, but that's not unusual for games/sports. If you are not interested in competitive play, you can get away with a fraction of that.

> We'd get a few boosters of a new expansion, they'd get a case

Giant red herring. Unless you are playing actual competitive formats, you can make decent, almost competitive decks for literally spare change.

OC> And richer players have access better to cards that poorer payers can never hope to be dealt.

>> You've demonstrated that only the rich can compete; not really refuting the point, is it?

> You are moving the goalposts now.

Am I? Was it you who set the goalpost wherein Magic is only about tournament-level play and not a casual game? Or does it seem to you that the OC's comment might be a statement about the economic situation in the broader cultural context that the game exists in?

I like how you say "almost competitive decks." Granted, I haven't played for over a good decade, but through the ~15 years that I did play, powerful rares were typically between several dollars and tens of dollars. The decks of my richer friends were stuffed to the gills with such cards -- it adds up, and a good deck can cost a couple hundred bucks. That might be spare change for you, but it isn't for a lot of magic players. And like, a draft game is fun but at a cost of 4 boosters per player, that's not pocket change. We'd use rules like "all commons" to level the playing field.

> Was it you who set the goalpost wherein Magic is only about tournament-level play and not a casual game?

It's either a competitive game, and therefore comparable to other competitive games and sports, that can cost you similar amounts, or it's a casual game, where you are not after 100% efficiency.

> I like how you say "almost competitive decks."

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/decks/budget/standard#paper

Help yourself. Most of those decks are underpowered when compared to tier-1 competitive decks, but can definitely steal games. None of them are anywhere close $200, and that's at standard-legal prices. Rotated cards are effectively $0.

> We'd use rules like "all commons"

https://magic.wizards.com/en/game-info/gameplay/formats/paup...

> And like, a draft game is fun but at a cost of 4 boosters per player, that's not pocket change

If you're going to the store to draft, you're paying $12-$15 for a tournament that's going to last several hours, played in the exact same format they're playing at the Pro Tour, and with prizes. That's the price of a movie ticket.

I understand that's still a lot to many people, but it's a far cry from "only the rich can compete". The prices are high and they could be lower, but they're not marginally higher than those of many other sports/games/activities.

Also, there's online play. If you're good at the game, you actually NET money.

Nah, your black-and-white characterization doesn't describe reality very well. Point is, when folks bring competition decks to play with casual players, the result is not fun for the casual players.

Another genre is "deckbuilding" where all the cards are in a shared pool and you construct a deck during the gameplay by various means.

that event type sounds interesting - I think it would be fun..

a more common and similar version where your deck is not pre-built (usually at home) - that is/was played a lot around thee parts is/was 'draft' although it's official nomenclature may be 'sealed' ( https://magic.wizards.com/en/game-info/gameplay/formats/seal...)

so it's a pool of packs you get, and you get to choose a card then pass.. so it's not totally random you get some choices, but you get stuck with some at the end of each pass rotation.. but then you build from there.

Definitely my favorite, above 'standard' or 'modern', at least it was, not sure about the new cards out or the "randomness" of the 'digital packs' are these days.

Your parent is referring to a different kind of game, i.e. deckbuilding games, like Dominion. They share some aspects with MTG but they are more like traditional board games. Many of those games are absolutely wonderful but you won't find a MTG-like experience.

> although it's official nomenclature may be 'sealed'

Sealed and Draft are two different formats.

Sealed = You open six boosters, make a deck from those cards.

Draft = 8 players around a table, each one opens a booster, picks a card, passes left, until all cards have been picked. Repeat again, this passing right. Repeat a third time, passing left again.

Check out Thunderstone and Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer

My friends and i use cockatrice these days even when we meet in person for that reason. No more issue where guy with largest budget wins every time.

If you can't afford M:TG you could try building a gaming PC. You get to pick your graphics card, sound card etc. ;)

Funny enough, one counter example is another card game that's largely seen as part of African-American culture, bid whist. In that game, there's a small pile of cards dealt separately as a kitty, which the winning bidder gets to incorporate into his hand after the bid is done.

Unless I'm misunderstanding what I just googled, Spades is at least somewhat a descendent of Bid Whist.

But I didn't dig that deeply so don't count on me being right.

In spades all 52 cards are dealt out 13 to each player, so there's absolutely no way* to change anything in your hand. There's no deck or discard pile to draw from, unlike other card games were you can draw or otherwise pick cards up others have discarded/played, or some games even allow you to play cards off other cards already on the table.

*in some variants you can trade 2 cards with your partner if you are taking a nil

Isn’t Texas hold em poker, I would guess the most popular card game, the same way?

No, you're dealt 2 cards, not 13. You eventually draw 5 to 3 cards from the community cards

I mean in the sense that you can't change your hand.

Not exactly. You might think you have some control over your hand in hold 'em, but it's an illusion.

You get two private cards and five community cards. You can pick any five of the seven to use at the showdown. It feels like you get choice with the five-of-seven, but you don't really. There's always one strictly superior set (or trivial equivalencies), and that will be automatically chosen in any serious context ("cards speak".)

Draw poker does give you some control, by letting you discard some cards to get them replaced. There are also wackier poker variations that let you buy or pick or trade out more cards, but very little of that is seriously played anywhere.

I think you're agreeing with me. Holdem doesn't let you change your hand.

texas hold'em is a bidding game, not a card game, really.

Spade, you play some probabilities with your partner, so there is some skill in the card play itself, but not much. Especially in this common version with jokers and prescribed starts (big joker first).

In holdem you can fold or raise. If you fold you are obviously not playing your hand.

There are games where you build your deck either before game or during game. Then you have control over what card comes at which probabilities.

Many forms of poker let you exchange some number of cards, or do a "pick N out of M from this pool" type of thing.

Hearts lets you shuffle cards around (the usual style I've seen is first pass right, then pass left, then pass across, then hold).

Blackjack (and, arguably, Go Fish) - and, as another commenter has pointed out, non-"standard-52" games like Magic The Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh, Netrunner, Legend Of The Five Rings, etc.

I’m gonna chime in here and say that in Cribbage you only “play” 4 of the 6 cards you’re dealt, the two discarded cards from each player become the crib which is counted for points, but not played.

> I'm having trouble thinking of a card game where you do get control over the cards you're dealt. Maybe there is one?

For French tarot, when dealing the cards, three are set aside and one player get them, then choose three cards from his hand to set aside (so that all players get the same number of cards)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Tarot#Rules

In Hearts you often get to pass 3 cards to an opponent before play begins.

Apparently no mention of the variant that, in my experience as a kid, was by far the most common: no bidding, 1 point to the winning team, or 2 if you win 10 books. Commonly, you bet 5 or 10 as a team and won for being first to the amount bet.

I played or watched probably thousands of games in middle and high school and I don't think I ever saw anyone play the formal way.

Yeah and as a result my bidding is still for shit. I always chalked it up to half the class sharing/standing-around one deck so we had to keep swapping out who was playing any given hand.

Never heard of that variant myself. Played constantly in high school, mostly during calculus and comp sci; wrote a game engine for it in C++ in that class.

Like poker, it's less about the cards and more about the social aspects. Actual card strategy is just table stakes. Can you bluff the other team into bidding too low or high? Can you read how your teammate bids and close the round accordingly? I've won plenty of games by forcing the other team to sandbag.

By leaving bidding out you are playing glorified war. I can see it for kids but it's not terribly interesting.

The only variant we'd play was a three player game where we'd have to remove a few cards to make the deck size a multiple of 3. Called it cutthroat because it's everyone for themselves. But we'd only play that if we couldn't get a fourth.

>The only variant we'd play was a three player game where we'd have to remove a few cards to make the deck size a multiple of 3.

We always just removed the 2 of clubs. 51/3=17 cards each.

Yes, thanks :) It's been a while and I didn't do the math...

I've never heard of no-bidding. One of the nice things about bidding is that it allows you to infer information about the hands that are being held by the various people at the table. If you don't have any bidding, then you are playing a weird version of the card game War.

Loved the article. I come from a family of four and sometime when I was in college we picked up Spades as a family. Definitely resonated with me as a way to bond with friends and family.

also for those interested: https://www.trickstercards.com/home/spades/ is an excellently developed FREE online spades site that we used during the pandemic

I learned spades from black students in college. My friends came up with a variation called “Nil Watch”, where one player in each partnership had to bid nil unless logically impossible (holding the big joker, holding the little joker and the 2, etc.). Then there was the drinking game version of that, called Death Watch.

We used the jokers and the two of spades as trumps, but not the two of diamonds. We pulled out the two of hearts and the two of diamonds.

I spent a good amount of time in the Midwest in an environment where about half the people were black, half white, and there was a good amount of card playing going on. The black people pretty universally wanted to either play Spades or Bid Whist. The white people played Euchre. There was little or no crossover among the groups. I only recall one white person who knew how to play Bid Whist, and one black person who knew how to play Euchre.

Interesting, I was surprised to see this presented as an African American originating game as it's been widely played for generations all over Canada.

There used to be a fantastic spades app on the Palm Pilot (!) which played pretty well, including fairly sensible partner play. There was a URL where you could get the source, but it was a dead URL, alas.

Anyone know a good spades app for iOS? I have "Spades card classic", which features pretty abysmal play, and "Spades Masters", which is online-with-other-people only.

The slide about learning the game is a bit shocking.

25% of players would not teach you the rules unless you convince them. only 55% would if you ask.

Can somebody comment on the reasons?

I have been asked few times in my life to teach chess and that was always a great boon. 'Someone wants to get into my hobby and I can be the one to show them the ropes' was always my though.

I am normally ticked off by inventive presentations on the web (just give me a wall of text, please!) but really enjoyed this one.

Frustrated the shit out of me (on FF Android), until I was saved by remembering Reader Mode.

I've never heard of spades until this article. I've played hearts (and always forget how), but not spades.

Is this a UK thing?

It's a US game, actually there are two games. Both follow from Whist and Bridge. There are, in the US, two games that go by the name of Spades but (as the primary differentiating characteristics) have different rules regarding bidding and scoring. In Black communities (the version discussed in the article) it's often played with a standard deck plus jokers (possibly removing other cards to make room for the jokers), and scoring is based on winning a bid and making book and some number of tricks over book (though not always, but the common form) which is similar to Contract Bridge and Whist. The other form is played with a standard deck and both partnerships can get points on each hand based on their bids, no need to make book (6 tricks as a base before getting points) just make your bid.

I am in my mid 40s, and as a kid in Cajun country you usually had a pretty good idea of how often older folks (grandparents and older) socially interacted on a casual basis with the other side of the white / black divide by how well they knew the rules to four card games.

The black communities usually played either Hearts or Spades.

The white communities would instead play either Bourre (boo-ray) or the Louisiana variant of Pedro (pee-droh).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourr%C3%A9

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_(card_game)

In unknown mixed company, most would settle on Hearts at first as it's the easiest to understand, and then usually alternate between Pedro and Spades.

I (white kid) grew up on the west coast of the US and played Spades growing up with my family. None of my friends knew Spades, but it seemed like everyone knew Hearts. My mom grew up on the east coast so I always kinda thought that she brought it with her out west. Had no idea it was cultural in other ways!

As another commenter mentioned, a lot of people in the US learned to play Spades in the military.

I had no idea about this cultural history. A bunch of us in high school comp sci used to play the online version bundled with Windows XP once we were done with our assignments...we'd try to queue up at the same time to get matched in the same game.

Geezus, now card games are being ruined by racial narrative, too.

I and many other people grew up playing Spades, and this is the first whiff of any such historical rewriting that I've encountered (though I shouldn't be surprised). I have no doubt that blacks as a group developed an affinity for the game -- but this piece tries to claim what is otherwise a unifying game is really all about black history. This is right up there with last year's "Police were invented to hunt escaped slaves".

Wikipedia is no ultimate source, but even there the history relates it to other, similar games, and reinforces that it was made very popular by GIs during WWII.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spades_(card_game)

typical behavior

But US policing does have roots in slave patrols. Unless it is your belief that the American Bar Association is rewriting history.

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_r...

That is an opinion piece written by a professor of justice studies at a sociology department (shocked I tell you, shocked). She's never been an attorney, has never been a member of the American Bar Association, and her opinions are her own. That piece was included in the ABA's quarterly magazine as an op-ed, and does not reflect upon the opinions of the ABA.

Your line "unless it is your belief that the American Bar Association is rewriting history" is categorically wrong as I just laid out above.

Your core claim isn't entirely true either: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-origins-of-policing-in...

The US Democratic party similarly has roots in slavery. By your logic it should similarly be defunded/disbanded.

So the ABA is posting something about law enforcement, an org that they deal with daily, that doesn't pass muster? The US Democratic party is no longer the party of slavers.

>So the ABA is posting something about law enforcement, an org that they deal with daily, that doesn't pass muster?

Non sequitur.

>The US Democratic party is no longer the party of slavers.

You're almost there (selfawarewolves).

Really surprised to read this history, I had no idea that there was any ethnic background to this. I'm really a bridge player, but have played spades, hearts and euchre at times as well. All great games.

Fantastic presentation and very cool project. Would have liked a 'what is Spades?' card for people who are not familiar with the game and might miss out on all the good stuff due to disorientation.

I used to hate spades, because I would get excoriated by my partner, for every mistake, and never given credit for doing well.

I preferred Hearts, where I got to "stick it" to others.

Yeah...I have issues.

Hmm I learnt it from Microsoft, playing on either windows or the zine against computers only

How you play any game, is how you play life.

Especially games like Monopoly.

> Scroll right to start

I'd rather not.

What score do people typically play to? I don't know. I can't read the font. Sigh guess I'll never know.

250, 300, 350, 500, and "other". The counts for each are 40, 33, 67, 151, and 40 (respectively).

I have heard that Bezos, Brin, and Ellison have a Spades group together. Huge lessons for business strategy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com