Spades Clinic: Culture 101 at HBS
TLDR//The Black community at Harvard Business School is super close, and it’s been one of the best parts of my HBS experience. In an effort to give back, my friend Alliyahgary and I hosted a spades clinic. We were feeling generous and wanted to help re-instate some Black cards before the holidays!
First off, the only people who gatekeep spades are the people who aren’t confident in their skills. We decided to teach a spades clinic because too many of our fellow HBS brethren were trying to hide whenever the words “spades” was uttered, so we made some printouts and recruited some of our fluent players (Godwin, Wale, Brandon, Brooke-Logann, Katherine, & many more) to help coach.
Inconveniently, it was actually hard to find materials to use to teach the clinic, so in typical Harvard fashion, we made our own. We also passed out an article about its history / significance, and put some key rules up on a slide so people could reference them as they played.
We didn’t expect it to go viral when we posted about it, but are appreciate of all the love (TikTok | Twitter). It’s a gift to be able to spread the joy that spades brings our family & friends.
Below I’ve included the printouts & slides we used during the clinic. We focused on the joker-joker-deuce-deuce variation and ignored nil & blind bids to keep things simple for the beginners — but please comment if you have edits we should incorporate! Also, please add to the Trash Talk section in the comments — we had some thought starters, but folks deserve more material since it’s a critical part of the game!
If you want to practice / play online with friends & family, my husband and I use the “Trickster Cards” app to play against my parents!
