In spades, is a deuce of clubs considered a spade?

Like any game, Spades has a lot of variations. Long unnecessary story short, I've moved A LOT. 48 states, 6 provinces, dozens of cities in Mexico... I like to play cards, it seems to dissolve borders. Anyway...

When I learned to play as a kid in Syracuse NY. Rank of cards from highest to lowest was: Big Joker, Little Joker, 2 H, 2 C, 2 D, 2 S, A S, --- 3 S. 3 H, and 3 C weren't used. Total number of tricks remained the same, but total number of spades was 18 instead of 13.

Since then, I've played a bunch of variations from "no nil bid allowed" "max 5 bid/hand" "reneg" "forced blind when -200" "2 D, and 2 S were trump behind the jokers" "jokers high then A S --- 2 S" and any number of combinations of these rules.

The "original" rules without the jokers and only the 13 spades as trump is probably the most common across the US as a whole. Maybe not the way they'd usually play, but they're familiar with this way most often.

Apples and Oranges, though. They're really different games. The mechanics are different, the tracking becomes a little more challenging, and the game seems to be less predictable. Just like with Hearts, spades gets to be a little mechanical and repetitious, but the additional 5 trump cards make it a little less so.

Best practice with any game is to make sure you all know the rules BEFORE the situation presents itself unless you're all very patient :-)

The deuce of club and hearts do not considered a spade in the standard game, however there are variants where they do.

From Pagat:

In some versions of Spades, some or all of the four twos are elevated to the top of the spade suit, are ranked in some specified order, and are considered to be spades. The rest of the cards rank as in normal.

For example, in the New York City rules the trump suit ranks is as follows: big joker, small joker, 2♦, 2♠, A, K, Q, J, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3

In the Deuces high rules the trump suit is is as follows:2♠, 2♦, 2♣ 2♡, A, K, Q, J, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3

Those variants are pretty common, and are implemented for example at AI-factory's Spades free app.