How to Play
Cutthroat Spades is the no-partnership, 3-player variant of Spades. Each player bids and scores individually with a 51-card deck (the [2♣] removed, 17 cards dealt to each player), spades remain the permanent trump suit, and a successful or failed nil bid still swings a player's score by 100 points entirely on its own.
Cutthroat Spades is the no-partnership variant of Spades, played by exactly 3 players who each bid and score entirely for themselves instead of pairing into teams. Because a standard 52-card deck cannot be split evenly three ways, the is removed before the deal, leaving 51 cards dealt 17 to each player. Every other pillar of Spades survives intact: spades are ALWAYS trump, players must follow suit, and a bid of 'nil' (0 tricks) is worth +100 if successful or -100 if it fails. The crucial difference is psychological as much as mechanical: with no partner to combine bids with or to 'cover' a risky nil, every hand is a three-way contest decided entirely by your own card reading.
Quick Reference
- 3 players, no partnerships; remove the from a standard 52-card deck, leaving 51 cards.
- Deal all 51 cards clockwise so each player holds 17 cards.
- Agree a target score, commonly 200 for a short game or 500 for a full match, before the first hand.
- Starting left of the dealer, each player bids individually (0-17 tricks, or 'nil' for zero); bids are never combined.
- The player left of the dealer leads the first trick; spades cannot be led until broken.
- Follow suit if possible; the highest spade played, or the highest card of the suit led if no spade appears, wins the trick and leads next.
- Meeting your bid scores 10 points per trick bid, plus 1 point per extra trick (bag); missing your bid costs 10 points per trick bid.
- A successful nil scores +100; a failed nil costs -100, tracked separately from any trick points.
- 10 accumulated bags trigger an individual 100-point penalty and reset your bag count to zero.
Players
Exactly 3 players, each playing entirely for themselves; there are no partnerships of any kind, which is the defining feature that separates Cutthroat Spades from the standard 4-player partnership game. Players may sit anywhere around the table since there is no partner to face. A single hand plays through all 17 tricks in about 12-18 minutes; a full match to a typical target of 200 or 500 points runs roughly 45-90 minutes depending on the target chosen. Turn order is clockwise, the first dealer is chosen by cutting for the highest card, and the deal then rotates clockwise after every hand.
Card Deck
- Take one standard 52-card pack and remove the , leaving exactly 51 cards; 52 cannot be split evenly three ways, so the lowest non-trump card is conventionally set aside.
- Rank order: A (high), K, Q, J, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 (low).
- Spades are ALWAYS trump, exactly as in standard Spades; any spade beats every card of a non-spade suit.
- With the removed, is the lowest non-spade card still in the deck.
Objective
Bid the number of tricks you alone expect to win each hand, then try to take exactly that many; extra tricks only add 1 bag-point each and count against you over time. Score 10 points per trick for meeting your bid, lose 10 points per trick for missing it, and race the other two players individually to the agreed target score. There is no team result to share; each player's fortunes rise and fall independently, hand by hand.
Setup and Deal
- Remove the from a standard 52-card pack, leaving 51 cards.
- Shuffle and deal all 51 cards clockwise, one at a time, so each of the 3 players holds exactly 17 cards.
- Agree the target score before the first hand: 200 points for a short game, 500 for a full match.
- The player to the dealer's left bids first; bidding then proceeds clockwise.
- After every hand, the deal rotates one seat clockwise.
- Keep an individual running score and an individual bag count for each of the 3 players; nothing is shared between players.
Bidding
- Starting left of the dealer and moving clockwise, each player announces, individually, how many of the 17 tricks they expect to take (0 through 17). There is no partner's bid to add; your bid stands entirely alone.
- Nil (zero): any player may bid 0 for a flat +100 bonus if they take no tricks at all, or a -100 penalty if they win even one trick. Because there is no partner to cover a stray trick, nil is considerably riskier here than in 4-player partnership Spades.
- Blind nil: a player who is behind by 100 or more points may declare nil before looking at their cards, for +200 if successful or -200 if it fails; many cutthroat tables ban blind nil outright since nobody can help the bidder recover from the loss.
- Some tables require every bid to be at least 1 to discourage a player from passively riding on the other two players' tricks; others allow any bid including 0 without restriction. Agree this before the first deal.
Gameplay
- The player to the dealer's left leads the first trick with any card except a spade; spades cannot be led until they have been 'broken' (played on an earlier trick because a player held no card of the suit led).
- Follow suit if you can. If you cannot follow the suit led, you may play any card, including a spade.
- The highest spade played wins the trick; if no spade was played, the highest card of the suit led wins. The winner collects the trick face-down and leads next.
- A renege (failing to follow suit when able) forfeits the hand under most house rules: the reneging player's bid is scored as an automatic failure.
- All 17 tricks are played out every hand; every one of the 51 cards in play is used.
Scoring
- Made bid: score 10 points per trick bid if you took at least that many tricks. Example: bid 6, took 6, score 60 points.
- Overtricks (bags): each trick taken above your bid scores 1 extra point immediately but also adds 1 to your personal bag count. On reaching 10 bags, you lose 100 points and your bag count resets to 0.
- Failed bid: if you took fewer tricks than you bid, you lose 10 points per trick bid. Example: bid 8, took 5, score -80 points, and no bags are added.
- Nil: +100 for taking zero tricks, -100 for taking any; blind nil, if the table permits it, is worth +200 or -200 instead.
- Because all three players score independently, a single hand can see one player gain, one lose, and one break roughly even, unlike partnership Spades where results are always paired.
Winning
The match ends at the close of any hand in which at least one player's individual running score reaches or passes the agreed target (200 for a short game, 500 for a full match). Whichever of the 3 players holds the highest score at that point wins outright; there is no partner to share the result with. If two players cross the target in the same hand, the higher individual score wins; if there is an exact tie for first place, most groups play one further hand as a tiebreaker.
Common Variations
- Four-Player Individual (Solo) Spades: keeps the full 52-card deck and the standard 13-trick, 13-card deal, but drops fixed partnerships so all four players bid and score individually; the same nil and bag rules apply.
- Two-Handed Cutthroat: reduces the deck further and deals the remainder evenly between the two players; exact card removal and any kitty rules vary more by table than in the 3-handed form.
- Reduced nil bonus: some cutthroat tables lower the nil bonus and penalty to +50 / -50, since a solo nil is inherently easier to attempt (if not easier to succeed at) than the partnership version implies.
- No-bag-penalty cutthroat: overtricks simply score 1 point each with no 10-bag penalty, favouring a faster, lower-tension game.
Tips and Strategy
- Track two separate opponents' likely spade counts rather than one partnership total; either opponent can out-trump you unpredictably at any point in the hand.
- A nil bid must survive both opponents independently, not just one, so only attempt it with a hand that has no Ace, no high spade, and enough small cards in every suit to duck safely.
- Hold back on voiding a suit early. With 17 cards each, both opponents have more cards in hand to punish an obvious void than they would in the 13-card partnership game.
- When you are well ahead on bags, deliberately underbidding by 1 trick is safer here than in partnership Spades, since you alone absorb the consequences either way.
Glossary
- Cutthroat: the no-partnership form of Spades, most commonly played by 3 players.
- Trick: one round of 3 cards, one per player; 17 tricks make up a hand.
- Bid: the number of tricks a player individually claims they will take; never combined with another player's bid.
- Nil: a bid of 0 tricks for +100 if successful, -100 if failed; entirely unshared, unlike the partnership version.
- Bag / overtrick: a trick won beyond your bid; 10 bags cost you 100 points individually.
- Breaking spades: the first time a spade is played in a hand; spades cannot be led before this happens.
- Renege: failing to follow suit despite holding the suit led; forfeits the hand under most house rules.
Tips & Strategy
Count outstanding spades carefully since two opponents, not one, are competing for every trick; do not assume a lone Ace or King is automatically safe. Save your longest side suit for the middle of the hand rather than the start, since voiding early gives both opponents more information about your hand. Bid conservatively until you are comfortable estimating tricks without a partner's cards to lean on, since a single bad guess costs you the full 10-points-per-trick penalty alone.
Because bids are never combined, precise self-assessment matters even more than in partnership Spades: overbidding costs you alone, and underbidding wastes your own strong cards as unscored bags. Track both opponents' likely trump counts independently rather than reasoning about a single partnership total, since either opponent can individually out-trump you at any point. With 17 cards in play per player, high side-suit cards that would normally be safe to cash early in 4-player Spades are more likely to be trumped by one of two opponents rather than one, so voiding a suit is riskier and should be timed later in the hand.
Trivia & Fun Facts
Because 51 divides evenly by 3 but not by 2 or 4, Cutthroat Spades is the cleanest of the non-standard Spades player counts; the 2-handed version needs a more complicated card-removal scheme to deal evenly. Since each hand deals out 17 tricks instead of 13, a single player sweeping every trick in a hand (a bid of 17) is worth 170 points in one deal, well above the maximum 130-point sweep possible in a 13-trick partnership hand.
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01Why is the [2♣] removed from the deck before dealing Cutthroat Spades?Answer Because 52 cards cannot be divided evenly among 3 players (52 divided by 3 leaves a remainder of 1), the lowest non-trump card, the [2♣], is conventionally set aside so the remaining 51 cards deal out to exactly 17 per player.
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02Why is a nil bid considered riskier in Cutthroat Spades than in standard 4-player partnership Spades?Answer In partnership Spades a player's partner can 'cover' a nil bidder by intercepting tricks they cannot avoid winning; in Cutthroat Spades there are no partnerships, so a nil bidder has nobody protecting them and must survive all 17 tricks entirely on their own card judgment.
History & Culture
Spades itself developed in the American Midwest in the 1930s as a simplified offshoot of Bridge and Whist, then spread rapidly through military barracks during and after World War II. Cutthroat Spades grew out of the same informal card-table culture: whenever only 3 players were on hand instead of a full 4, the fixed-partnership bidding was simply dropped in favour of individual bids and scores, keeping the trump structure, nil bid, and bag penalty intact. The adaptation is now widely documented on rules references such as Pagat and Bicycle Cards as the standard way to play Spades with an odd number of players.
Cutthroat Spades preserves Spades' status as one of the most widely played American card games in settings where a fourth player simply is not available, from military barracks and college dorm rooms to family game nights. It keeps the game's signature nil bid and bag-penalty tension intact while sharpening the psychological duel, since every hand is a three-way contest with no ally to share credit or blame.
Variations & House Rules
Four-Player Individual (Solo) Spades keeps the full 52-card deck and standard 13-trick deal but drops partnerships so all 4 players score for themselves. Two-Handed Cutthroat reduces the deck further and deals the remainder between 2 players, with card-removal and kitty rules varying more by table. Some cutthroat groups reduce the nil bonus and penalty to +50 / -50, and others drop the 10-bag penalty entirely in favour of scoring every overtrick at a flat 1 point.
For a faster game, cap the match at 100 or 150 points instead of 200. Consider banning blind nil in Cutthroat Spades since no partner exists to help a player recover from a failed -200 bid. Some groups award a bonus of an extra 100 points for 'shooting the moon' by taking all 17 tricks in a single hand, on top of the normal bid score.
