The Rules of Spades (with simplified scoring)

Something I forgot to say (which I'm hoping is common sense) is that if more than one player doesn't have a card in the suit led and plays a spade, then the higher ranking spade wins the trick.

The simplified scoring presented in this video differs from standard scoring in three ways:

1. In standard scoring, teams earn 10 points for each trick bid and also 1 point for each overbid (or "bag"). It seems to me very rare, though, that the single digit points ever determine a game's outcome.

2. In standard scoring, teams loose points when they don't make their bid. In my experience, that makes one team's score so much lower than the other team's that it's difficult to catch up. It's more exciting for me to have a game that's a little "closer at the finish line."

3. In standard scoring, teams don't loose points for overbids (or "bags") until they get ten of them. That requires having to keep a separate tally of overbids. I find that each hand is more fun when the penalty is more immediate.