Spades
Spades with friends, without the download. One of you makes a table, the rest join with a four-letter code, and any empty seat is filled by a bot until a person wants it. No account, no ads, no waiting room.
How a game starts
Tap Play, pick your rules, and you have a table. Share the code, or the link that carries it, in whatever chat your friends already use. When they open it they are at the table. Anyone who is late or busy is covered by a bot of the strength you choose, and a person can take that seat over any time. If someone's connection drops mid-hand, a bot plays the seat until they are back, so the table never stalls on one player.
Online games run on a light clock, so nobody sits watching a partner who has wandered off. Between hands there is a short review of the score. Rematch is a vote, not a host's decree.
The rules you grew up with, and the ones your table argues about
Classic partnership Spades to 500: nil and blind nil, ten bags cost a hundred, Boston takes the game. Every one of those is a setting. Turn blind nil off, change the bag penalty, make bags roll over, score a failed bid by the shortfall instead of the whole bid, break spades only after the third trick, lead from the left of the dealer or with the lowest club. A preset matching cardgames.io and one matching 247 Spades are built in, so a table that moved here from either site plays the way it remembers. Three-handed cutthroat, with no partner and a shorter game, is a preset too. Jokers can join the deck for the tables that play with them.
Bots that play, not bots that fold
Three levels. Easy is for learning the game. Hard is the default, and it bids sensibly, sets nils, and covers its partner. Expert counts every card it has seen and thinks out the rest of the hand before each play, which makes it a genuinely uncomfortable opponent. Every seat picks its own level, and a host can change a bot's level between hands.
If you remember Yahoo Spades or Internet Spades
A lot of people learned online Spades in the Yahoo Games rooms, or in the Internet Spades that shipped inside Windows XP, Vista and 7 and matched you with three strangers from the MSN Gaming Zone. Both are gone now. What made them work was simple: a table, four chairs, and a game that started the moment they were full. Follow Suit keeps that shape and swaps the strangers for a link you send to people you actually want to play with. The table is drawn on green felt, the cards are readable at a glance, and a hand of Spades takes about as long as it did then.
Solo, on a phone, or on a big screen
Playing alone against three bots needs no connection at all and saves itself, so a hand you leave on the train is waiting when you get back. The table fits a phone held sideways or upright, a laptop, or a television. On a phone you can add it to your home screen and it opens like an app. There is also a desktop app for Windows and Linux for people who want the game in their taskbar.
Free, with an account only if you want one
Everything above is free and works without signing up. An account is optional and does two things: it carries your name, rule presets and statistics between devices, and it lets you add friends and invite them to a table with one tap while they are online. An optional membership unlocks card backs, felts and table sounds. It never changes the rules of the game or who gets to play.