Trick-Taking Card Games: How They Work, and Three to Play Free

A trick-taking card game is played in rounds called tricks: one player leads a card, everyone follows with one card each, and the highest card wins the trick. Spades, Hearts and Euchre are three of the most popular in North America, and all three are free to play here, against computer players or at a table with friends.

This page explains how tricks and trump work, how the three games differ, and which one to learn first.

How does a trick work?

Every trick-taking game shares the same four steps:

1. Someone leads. The first player puts any allowed card face up.
2. Everyone follows suit. Each player in turn must play a card of the suit that was led, if they hold one.
3. The highest card wins. The highest card of the suit led takes the trick, unless someone played a trump.
4. The winner leads next. The player who took the trick starts the next one.

The rules about what you may lead change from game to game, and so does the point of winning tricks: in Spades you want exactly as many as you bid, in Euchre you want at least three of five, and in Hearts you mostly want none with points in them.

What is trump?

Trump is a suit that beats every other suit. When you cannot follow suit, playing a trump card wins the trick unless someone plays a higher trump.

• Spades: spades are always trump. They are locked until someone has played one on an earlier trick, which is called breaking spades.
• Euchre: trump is chosen at the start of every hand. The jack of trump becomes the highest card, and the jack of the other suit of the same color becomes the second highest. These two are the bowers.
• Hearts: there is no trump. The highest card of the suit led always wins.

Spades, Hearts and Euchre side by side

Spades: bid it, then make it

Each player bids how many of the 13 tricks they expect to win, and partners add their bids into one contract. Make the contract and your team scores 10 points per trick bid. Miss it and you lose the same amount, all or nothing. Every extra trick is a bag worth one point, but ten bags cost 100, so the best players stop winning once the contract is made. A player can also bid nil, promising to win nothing at all, for 100 points either way.

How to play Spades · Play Spades free

Hearts: the game where tricks hurt

Before each hand, every player passes three cards: to the left, then right, then across, then no pass, and round again. The two of clubs leads the first trick. Each heart you take costs a point and the queen of spades costs 13, so most of the game is ducking: getting rid of dangerous cards on tricks someone else wins. The exception is shooting the moon. Take every heart and the queen in one hand and you score nothing while everyone else takes 26.

How to play Hearts · Play Hearts free

Euchre: five cards, two bowers

Euchre uses only the 9s through aces, five cards each, with one card turned face up. Players take turns deciding whether that card’s suit should be trump, and if nobody wants it, a second round lets anyone name another suit. The side that chose trump needs three tricks. Fail, and the other side scores 2, which is called being euchred. Win all five and you score 2; do it alone, with your partner sitting out, and you score 4. A hand takes a couple of minutes, which makes Euchre the quickest of the three.

How to play Euchre · Play Euchre free

Which one should you learn first?

Start with Hearts. There is no bidding and no trump, so the only rules you need are following suit and knowing which cards carry points. Within a few hands you will be counting spades and planning your passes.

Then Spades. It keeps the 52-card deck and the follow-suit rule, and adds two things: a bid at the start of every hand and a trump suit that never changes. It is also the best of the three for two friends, who can play as partners against two computer players.

Then Euchre. Trump changes every hand and the bowers break the usual ranking, so it rewards players who are already comfortable with tricks. Once it clicks, it is the fastest and most social game of the three.

Other trick-taking games

The family is much larger than these three. Bridge is the partnership game with an auction that sets the contract and the trump suit. Whist is its simpler ancestor, with trump decided by a turned-up card. Pinochle uses a 48-card deck and adds melds, scoring card combinations as well as tricks. Oh Hell has every player bid the exact number of tricks they will take, with the hand size changing every round. None of them are on Card & Puzzle yet; Spades, Hearts and Euchre are.

Play them with friends

All three have tables. One of you starts a table in the game, the others join with the code or link, and any empty seat is taken by one of the Card & Puzzle regulars, named computer players who are always marked as such. For two of you, see card games for two.