Spades a trick-taking card game

spades gameObject: The object of spades is to reach a pre-determined score; players (or partnerships) score by collecting the exact amount of tricks that you (or your partnership) bid.
Note: There are many variations of spades. This page will describe Individual, Cutthroat, and Partnership Spades.
The deck: A standard 52-card deck is used. Spades is the highest suit, followed by hearts, diamonds, and clubs. Within each suit, Aces rank highest, followed by K, Q, J, 10, …, 3, 2.
The deal, the bid, and the play: An equal number of cards from a standard 52-card deck are dealt to the players, with any odd cards set aside for that hand. Players in turn announce the number of tricks that they will take for that hand. Once all players have bid, the player to the left of the dealer begins play by leading any non-spade. Players in turn must follow suit of they are able, and may play any card if unable to follow suit. The highest ranking card of the led suit wins the trick unless a spade is played (due to the fact that a player did not have the led suit and decided to play a spade on that trick), in which case the highest ranking spade wins the trick. The player that took the last trick plays the first card of the next trick. A player may not lead a spade until such time as a spade is played on a previous trick. Play continues in this manner until all cards are played from each player’s hand.
Scoring: Players score 10 points for each trick that they bid and made, and score an additional 1 point for any additional tricks that they made over their bid. Players lose 10 point for each bid trick if they do not take the number of tricks that they bid. For example, a player that bids 3 tricks would score 30 if they took exactly 3 tricks, 32 if they took 5 tricks, and -30 if they took any number of tricks less than 3. Beware of making too many tricks over the number that you bid! If a player, of the course of a game, reaches 10 additional tricks, then that player loses 100 points!
Scores are totaled at the conclusion of each hand, and the game is won by the player (or partnership) that reaches the pre-determined score (usually 200 or 500).
Complete Rules and Strategy: Other sites, the Wikipedia for example, have written complete rules and some strategies for playing spades. You can also find the rules for Individual spades, Cutthroat spades, and Partnership spades (as played at Spadester)
Online Play Rankings (Important!): When playing online spades (for money) at most of the skill games sites, your ranking will fluctuate as you play. All players start with the same ranking when they first register, and their ranking increases with each win and decreases with each loss. A word of caution — be wary of playing a newly-registered player for large stakes, as the player could very well be an expert whose ranking does not yet reflect their skill (since they have played only a very few games on the site).