The scoring tells you how to play
Look at the two outcomes side by side. An extra trick beyond your call is worth 0.1. Falling a single trick short costs you your entire call. Calling 5 and making 7 scores 5.2; calling 5 and making 4 scores −5.
That asymmetry is roughly fifty to one. It means the correct instinct in almost every close decision is to call low. A player who habitually shades their call down by one finishes far ahead of a player who shades up by one, even though the second player wins more tricks.
Counting your callable tricks
Count conservatively, in this order:
- Aces: count each as a trick. An ace in a side suit wins unless someone is void and trumps it.
- Kings: count as roughly half a trick each. A king wins when the ace is elsewhere and doesn’t fall on it.
- Spade length: this is where the real value sits. Your fourth spade and beyond are close to certain winners — once the other three hands are stripped of spades, your small ones take tricks by themselves.
- Short side suits: a void or singleton is worth something only if you have spades left to trump with. Void plus no trump is worth nothing.
Add these up and then subtract a little. Hands play worse than they count, because opponents also hold spades and your kings are not as safe as they look.
Spades are a budget, not a bonus
Because trumping is compulsory when you are void, you do not always control when your spades get spent. A hand with three low spades and several voids may be forced to burn all of them early, leaving you without control exactly when you need it.
Count spades as a resource you will partly lose control of, and treat long spade holdings — five or more — as the strongest hands in the game. They win late tricks that nobody can take from you.
Remember you must beat the trick
You cannot duck. If you hold a card of the led suit higher than anything played so far, you have to play it. That has two consequences worth planning around:
- High cards in side suits get pulled out of your hand whether you like it or not, so don’t plan sequences that depend on holding an ace back.
- Leading a low card of a suit where opponents hold high ones forces those high cards out early — sometimes exactly what you want, if you are trying to set up your own long suit.
Once you have made your call
The moment your tricks won equal your call, your priorities invert. Further tricks are worth a tenth of a point each — effectively nothing — so stop competing. Play your lowest legal card, keep your remaining high cards and spades out of the fight, and let others take what they need.
The exception is when an opponent is one trick away from their own call. Taking that trick costs you almost nothing and costs them their entire call. In a close match this is the single highest-value play available to you.
Playing against the calls
Because the four calls are public before a card is played, you always know what everyone is trying to do. Two things follow:
- If the calls total well over thirteen, several players must fail. Play safe, make your own number, and let them collide.
- If the calls total under thirteen, there are spare tricks going begging. This is the one situation where quietly collecting overtricks is worth anything at all.
Common mistakes
- Calling your trick count instead of your certain tricks. Count what you will win against good defence, not against nothing.
- Chasing overtricks. Winning three extra tricks earns 0.3 and may cost the control you needed next deal.
- Forgetting that misses go negative. A single failed call of 5 wipes out several successful deals. Consistency beats ambition here more than in any other game on this site.
Ready to try it? Start a game against AI opponents or friends, or read the FAQ for quick rule clarifications.