A central server talks to the player's machines and sends information back. Player A selects say, DIAMOND 9 and clicks on it - data goes to the server and is sent back to all the players in the game for their screens to update. If your connection is slow this will show up so check the connection speed using freely available S/W - the in and out connection speeds will be vastly different - fast in and much slower going out.
If you have lots of applications running in the background particularly some naughty programme that is sending stuff on the internet this will slow things down too. Click START then select RUN and in the box type msconfig (you can do it now). See what is called up at startup - uncheck everything. See what services are running - consider removing anything suspicious.
Lastly - Give up SPADES and take up BRIDGE with Bridge Base Online (BBO) load their quite benign S/W on your machine and Play / Watch as many as 13,000 players around the world from raw beginner to world champion class. Totally Free! Ask if need Bridge help.
BTW - BBO sometimes suffers this problem too - a few rude players make no allowance for connections issues and ask others to play faster - poor social skills.
Peccavi, October 2008
