After struggling for a while, trying to figure out why SSMS didn’t show anything in the Spatial Results pane, I finally found the reason. My first attempt to create a geo shape was to create a point from some random coordinate (that I copy/pasted from an example I found in some forum post). Then I created a polygon with coordinates from a small area in my neighborhood. When I did a select * the Spatial Results pane seemed empty. In fact, since the first point I’ve created was on the opposite side of the globe, the Spatial Results view was zoomed out so that the shapes was too small to be visible.

Another issue I ran into was in what order the coordinates should be added when creating a polygon. It’s a bit counterintuitive that they should be added counterclockwise but the Left Hand Rule (as described in the Gist below) makes sense.