Spades Glossary — What Every Term Means

The most common Spades terms and what they mean at the table, ordered by how often you will hear them.

Bid: The number of tricks a player promises to take (1–13). Partners' bids are added to form the team contract.
Nil: A bid of zero tricks. Making nil scores +100; taking a single trick costs -100.
Trick (book): One round of four cards, one from each player, won by the highest spade or the highest card of the led suit. A hand has 13 tricks.
Trump: Spades, permanently. A spade beats every card of any other suit, and between spades the higher rank wins.
Breaking spades: The first spade played to a trick. Until then, spades may not be led (unless a player holds nothing but spades).
Bag (overtrick): A trick taken beyond the team's bid: worth 1 point now, but every tenth bag costs 100 points.
Sandbagging: Deliberately underbidding to pile up bags — risky, because ten bags wipe out 100 points.
Set: Failing to reach the team's combined bid: the team scores -10 per bid trick.
Ruffing (trumping): Playing a spade on a trick that was led in another suit because you are void in the led suit.
Sloughing: Discarding a card of a third suit when you cannot follow suit and choose not to trump.
Cover: Partnering a nil bidder by overtaking tricks the nil bidder would otherwise win.
500: The standard winning score. This site also offers a 300-point house rule for shorter games, with -200 ending the match as a loss.