I am a big fan of the game spades, for those of you who do not know how to play spades, I shall give you a brief introduction.
Spades is a team card game, well unless your partner is useless that is 
You are dealt a hand of 13 cards and have to make as many tricks as possible out of those 13 cards.
The maximum bid that is made on a table is 13, but I find that if it is my bid last, even if I know I have my books, I always make it a 12 bid, just incase my partner hasn’t got their books, or if I can steal books from the opposition and go for the set, to which they lose 10 points for each bid made, so if they bid 8 books, then they lose 80 points.
Spades is very much a strategy game such as poker, and is an enjoyable and cheap pass time.
So for example, someone lays an ace of diamonds down, he or she is counting that as a book, if you have no diamonds, you lay a low spade onto that book and steal it from your opposition.
As the name of the game, the spades are the major cards in a game, as they can cut a suit and steal tricks.