General overview Number of players Two or more the game is most commonly played with four players in pairs ('Partnership spades') The deck Standard 52-card deck. Mavis Kirkwood is still alive at 91 and in 2020 was recognized by the Mayor of Buffalo NY for her and the Kirkwoods' contributions to communities across the country. Members of the Kirkwood family were the winners of the 2012 Charlotte Spades Open Tournament, and the Western NY Tournament of Champions in 2017. The popularity of the game expanded when Frank and Mavis Kirkwood relocated to Buffalo NY in search of work and opportunity, and family members that served in the military spread the game around the country. One account of the history of the game is that it was created by the Kirkwood family in McCool, Mississippi, in the 1930s. troops were stationed, both in WWII and later deployments. It also remained widely popular in countries in which U.S. After the war, veterans brought the game back home to the U.S., where due to the GI Bill it spread to and became popular among college students as well as in-home games. The game's popularity in the armed forces stems from its simplicity compared to Bridge and Euchre and the fact that it can be more easily interrupted than Poker, all of which were also popular military card games. came during World War II, when it was spread by soldiers traveling around the globe. The game's rise to popularity in the U.S.

It is unclear which game it is most directly descended from, but it is known that Spades is a member of the Whist family and is a simplification of Contract Bridge such that a skilled Spades player can learn Bridge relatively quickly (the major additional rules being dynamic trump, the auction, dummy play, and rubber scoring).

Spades was devised in the United States in the late 1930s.

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