Ask Auntie Faye: What a Renege Costs

Every table needs law. Auntie Faye has run the kitchen table in Charlotte for longer than some of you have been playing, and the Front Porch asked her to start taking questions. Rulings are final. Explanations are free. The first six questions are the ones every Spades room already argues about; Faye answers them for whist.

The dispute

Clubs get led. The player across from you plays a heart. Three books later, the same player follows clubs. Somebody at the table says “hold on,” somebody else says “it’s too late,” and the fourth person has already started shuffling. What does a renege cost, and who gets to call it?

Faye’s ruling

The hand is over.

If the side that bid reneged, they are set. The whole bid, not a book of it. If that’s their second set, the game is over too, and I don’t want to hear about the score.

If the other side reneged, the bid is made. Scored as bid, nothing extra. You don’t get to win bigger because they cheated; you get what you said you’d get.

And you don’t call a renege, you prove one. Turn the book over. If the card is there, the ruling comes down. If it isn’t, you just lost the hand, because you accused somebody at my table of cheating and you were wrong. Count before you open your mouth.

Why

A renege isn’t a mistake, it’s a lie told with a card. The follow-suit law is the only thing that makes this a game. Three-book penalties and play-it-over rules all say the same thing: we’ll let it slide a little. At my table it doesn’t slide. The hand ends, the score moves, we deal again, and nobody reneges twice.

I raised my nephew Dre on that rule. He reneged once, at eleven years old, and I made him turn the book over himself in front of everybody. He talks a lot at the table now. He has never once played off-suit.

In the app

It can’t happen. The app will not let you play a card you aren’t allowed to play, so the law enforces itself and nobody has to turn a book over. The elders call that progress. I call it one less thing to rule on.

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Got a table dispute? Auntie Faye rules. Write in.