Printable Spades Score Sheet

Spades scoring is built around bidding a specific number of tricks per partnership and then being rewarded or punished based on how close the actual result lands to that bid — including a hidden penalty for winning too many tricks, which is the part most new sheets miss entirely.

Making or failing a bid

Each partnership bids a combined number of tricks before play begins. Making the bid exactly or overshooting it scores 10 points per trick bid (a bid of 6, made, scores 60) plus 1 point for every "overtrick" — a trick won beyond the bid. Failing to reach the bid costs 10 points per trick bid, subtracted instead of added, regardless of how many tricks the side actually won.

Bags: the overtrick penalty most sheets forget

Those 1-point overtricks aren't free — they accumulate as "bags," and once a partnership's total bags reach 10, they trigger a 100-point penalty and the bag count resets. This means winning extra tricks beyond a bid is a trap disguised as a bonus: 1 point now, but a real risk of losing 100 points later if bags pile up unnoticed. A sheet needs a running bag-count column separate from the main score, since that's the only way to see a bag penalty coming before it happens rather than being surprised by it.

Nil and blind nil: their own scoring rules entirely

A player may bid "nil" — a bet to win zero tricks individually — worth a flat bonus (commonly 100 points) if achieved, or the same amount as a penalty if the player takes even one trick. A "blind nil," bid before even looking at your hand, doubles that value in both directions (commonly 200). Nil and blind nil scores are personal to the bidding player and calculated separately from the partnership's combined bid-and-trick score for that hand, even though both get added to the same partnership running total.

Reading a hand's result

A clean row records: the combined partnership bid, tricks actually won, whether the bid was made (add 10 per trick bid plus 1 per overtrick) or failed (subtract 10 per trick bid), any nil or blind nil bonus or penalty scored individually, and the updated bag count. The game usually ends at 500 points, though a partnership can also lose outright by accumulating 10 bags too many times or crossing an agreed negative threshold, depending on house rules.

Partnership versus solo (cutthroat) scoring

Spades is traditionally played as fixed two-player partnerships, with bids and bags tracked jointly per team as described above, but a "cutthroat" variant has each of three or four players bidding and scoring individually rather than combining with a partner. The scoring mechanics — 10 points per trick bid, 1 per overtrick, bags accumulating toward a 100-point penalty — stay identical; only the number of separate running totals on the sheet changes, from two (partnerships) to three or four (individual players).

The bidding order, trump (spades are always trump), and how a nil bidder's cards are played are all explained on the full Spades rules page, with bid-and-bag totals worked through on the scoring deep-dive. Whether a nil bid was broken is a frequent flashpoint, and the dispute page lays out how it's ruled on.

Does a nil bidder's partner's tricks count toward the partnership's own combined bid? Yes — the nil bid and its bonus or penalty are scored separately for that individual player, but the other partner's tricks still count toward whatever combined bid the partnership made together for that hand, and both scoring events happen on the same hand.

What happens to accumulated bags if a partnership reaches exactly 10? The moment bag count hits 10 (not "in a single hand," but cumulatively across the game), that partnership loses 100 points immediately and their bag count resets to 0 — it's a running total across the whole game, not something that resets each hand on its own.

Spades belongs to the same Card Games category hub as this site's other trick-taking games. Because a partnership needs to track both a point total and a separate bag count, some tables prefer the Universal Scorekeeper over two paper columns.