Cozy Classic
Free Spades
Larch Hollow Spades
Classic four-handed Spades with a computer partner, a clear bid step, the cards you may play lit up, a penciled score sheet for every hand, three levels for the table, and hints that explain.
Read the full Larch Hollow Spades guide
How to play
- Press Play. Everyone gets 13 cards. Yours sit along the bottom, sorted by suit with the spades on the right. Cornelius sits on your left, Constance across the bench as your partner and Agatha on your right, each holding a fan of face-down cards.
- Bidding: starting on the dealer’s left, everyone bids once, the number of tricks they expect to take. On your turn, step your bid up or down and tap Bid, or tap Nil to promise no tricks at all. Your side’s contract is your bid plus Constance’s.
- Tricks: the player on the dealer’s left leads first. Everyone must follow suit if they can; a player who cannot may trump with a spade or throw any card. The highest spade wins the trick, or the highest card of the suit led if no spade was played. The winner leads next. Tap a card to pick it and tap it again to play it.
- Spades cannot be led until a spade has been played on an earlier trick (spades are broken), unless the leader holds nothing but spades.
- Scoring: a side that makes its contract scores 10 a trick bid, and each trick over is a bag worth 1 point. A side that falls short loses 10 a trick bid. A nil scores 100 if the bidder takes no tricks and loses 100 if they take any. Every time a side’s bags reach 10, it loses 100 points.
- The game ends after a hand in which a side reaches 500. The higher score wins. If the sides are level, another hand is played.
Controls
- Touch or mouse: when it is your bid, tap minus or plus to set the number of tricks and tap Bid, or tap Nil. In play, tap a card to pick it up and tap it again to play it, or switch to playing on one tap in Settings. After a hand, tap Next hand. Undo, Hint, Last trick and Menu sit on the shelf below the bench, or beside it on a landscape phone. Tap the score board for the score sheet.
- Keyboard: while you bid, the up and down arrows or plus and minus change your bid and B bids it. In play, the arrow keys move along your hand and Enter or Space picks or plays the card in focus. N deals the next hand, S opens the score sheet, L shows the last trick, U undoes, H shows a hint and Escape clears a pick.
- Restart in the toolbar starts a new game. Menu starts a new game, opens the score sheet, changes the table’s level, the game length, the spade and blind nil rules, how you play a card and the table’s speed in Settings, and shows your statistics and the rules. The toolbar also has pause, help, optional sound and fullscreen.
What you do
Larch Hollow Spades is the classic partnership trick-taking game for four, played on a workbench in a garden potting shed kept as a card room, with plank walls, a brass lamp on a chain, clay pots on the shelves and a window onto the larches at dusk. You and your partner, Constance the pine marten, sit across the bench from each other against Cornelius the hare and Agatha the rook. Everyone gets 13 cards and bids the tricks they expect to take; your bid and Constance’s add up to your side’s contract. Then you follow suit, spades trump everything, and each side tries to make its contract without collecting too many spare tricks, because every tenth one costs a hundred points. Bid nil if you think you can take nothing at all. The first side to 500 wins. Constance keeps the score in pencil and her glasses on the end of her nose; Cornelius is courteous and a little unlucky; Agatha counts every card and says very little about it.
- Three levels for the table: Gentle bids roughly, never bids nil and now and then plays a card on a whim; Steady values its hand trick by trick, covers a partner’s nil and plays sensibly for the contract; Sharp counts every card and void, bids nil when the hand allows, ducks bags once its contract is safe and hunts an opponent’s nil.
- A clear bid step: your bid starts at a quick count of your aces, kings and long spades, you step it up or down and confirm it, or bid nil. Constance’s bid shows beside yours, so you bid as a side.
- On your turn the cards you may play stand out and the others dim, and a card you cannot play says why: follow suit, or spades are not broken yet.
- Every name plate shows tricks taken against the bid, and the score board shows both sides’ scores, bags and whether spades are broken. Tap it for the score sheet: every hand’s bids, tricks and running totals.
- A result card after every hand shows the contract, any nil, the bags and the ten-bag penalty for both sides beside the running totals.
- Standard rules with common options: a game to 300, spades that may lead at any time, and blind nil for a side 100 or more behind (off by default).
Tips worth knowing
- Count your sure tricks first: aces, kings with a small card beside them, and the ace and king of spades. Add about one for every spade past the fourth.
- Bid as a side. If Constance has already bid high, there is no need to stretch your own bid to cover her.
- Bags add up. Once your contract is safe, play under the winning card instead of taking spare tricks, especially with seven or more bags on the board.
- Bid nil with no aces, no high spades and few spades of any kind. Get rid of your dangerous high cards early, while someone else is winning the trick.
- When your partner bids nil, play high in front of her and take the tricks she might otherwise be stuck with.
- Use the hint to learn. It looks only at the cards you can see and says why.
Accessibility
- Everything can be played with a keyboard: the bid steps up and down with the arrow keys, the arrow keys move a visible focus along your hand, Enter or Space picks and plays, and single letter keys bid, deal the next hand, open the score sheet, show the last trick, undo and hint.
- Every card in your hand is labeled for screen readers with its name and whether it can be played now, and why not when it cannot. The name plates read out each player’s bid and tricks, and the score board reads out both sides’ scores and bags.
- The cards you may play are marked by an outline as well as by dimming the others, and every score is shown as a number.
- Nothing is timed. The table waits while a menu is open, its speed can be set to Relaxed, and the last trick and the score sheet can be looked at any time.
- Reduced motion places the cards at once instead of dealing and sliding them and keeps the players still. Sound is optional and never needed to play.
Questions
How strong is each level?
We measured the levels with our own simulation of 1,000 games to 500 for each pairing, one partnership against another, with the seats and the first dealer moving round the table. An even match wins about half the time. Against a pair that bids and plays at random, a Gentle pair won 996 of 1,000 games, and Steady and Sharp pairs won all 1,000. A Steady pair beat a Gentle pair in 899 games (89.9 percent) and a Sharp pair beat a Gentle pair in 956 (95.6 percent). A Sharp pair beat a Steady pair in 685 games (68.5 percent). These are computer players, not people, so treat the numbers as a guide.
Can a beginner win with Constance as a partner?
Yes, at Gentle that is the point. In the same simulation, a simple scripted beginner that bids its aces and kings plus its spades past three, never bids nil, leads an ace when it has one, wins cheaply when it can and trumps when it cannot follow suit, partnered with a Gentle player against two Gentle players, won 571 of 1,000 games (57.1 percent). With a Steady partner against two Steady players the same beginner won 318 (31.8 percent), and with a Sharp partner against two Sharp players, 249 (24.9 percent).
Which Spades rules does this use?
Standard four-handed partnership Spades: 13 cards each, one bid each from the dealer’s left, spades always trump, no leading spades until they are broken, 10 points a trick bid for a made contract and minus 10 a trick bid for a set, 1 point a bag, minus 100 for every ten bags, nil for 100 either way, and a game to 500. House rules vary a great deal, so Settings offers a game to 300, spades that may lead at any time, and blind nil worth 200 for a side 100 or more behind, with two cards swapped between the partners.
What are bags?
Tricks your side takes beyond its contract. Each one adds a single point, which looks generous until the tenth arrives and takes 100 points with it. The score board shows each side’s bags, and the count carries over from hand to hand.
How does nil work?
Bid nil to promise you will take no tricks at all. If you manage it your side scores 100; if you take even one trick, your side loses 100. Your partner’s bid still stands on its own, and any tricks a nil bidder takes count as bags rather than toward the partner’s contract.
What can I undo?
Undo takes back the card you just played, as long as nobody has played a card since, so no new card has been seen. Bids are final once made, because the whole table heard them, and so is a blind nil swap.
Does anyone at the table look at my cards?
No. Constance, Cornelius and Agatha each choose from what a player at the bench could see: their own cards, every bid, the cards played to every trick, who has run out of a suit, the scores and the bags. Nobody signals to a partner: every bid comes from the bidder’s own cards and the bids already made. The hints follow the same rule. Our regressions check this by shuffling the hidden cards and confirming every choice stays the same.
What does the game save?
It saves after every bid and card: your settings, the game in progress (every bid and card, so you can close the page mid-hand and carry on later) and your statistics for Gentle, Steady and Sharp. Everything stays in this browser’s local storage, with no account.
Guides and roundups
Game details
- Genre
- Cozy Classic
- Difficulty
- Medium
- Session
- About three minutes a hand, saved as you go
- Inputs
- Keyboard, Mouse, Touch
- Devices
- Desktop, Tablet, Mobile
- Made by
- CozyWorld
- Updated
- 2026-10-31
A quiet card game with three computer players, played for points only, with no betting, purchases, accounts, timers or streak pressure.
