Lockup rules

Setup & dealing

Four players play for themselves — there are no partnerships. The full 52-card deck is dealt out, 13 cards each. Aces are high and there is no trump suit: a trick can only be won by the suit that was led. The first dealer is chosen at random and the deal rotates one seat left each hand; the player to the dealer's left leads the first trick.

In our game you sit South against three computer opponents. Each seat shows the tricks it has taken this hand, a lock badge when a player is sitting out, and the crossed-out cards that lockups have removed from hands.

Trick play: the club rules

Basic play is standard: follow suit if you can, play anything if you are void, highest card of the led suit wins (no trump exists to beat it), and the winner leads next. On top of that sit Lockup's two club rules:

• You may not lead a club — ever — unless every card left in your hand is a club. Clubs must enter tricks some other way.
• The picture-card exception: if a jack, queen or king is already on the table in the current trick, you may play your club of that same rank instead of following suit. A queen of hearts on the table legalises your queen of clubs, even while you still hold hearts.

The exception is the heart of the game. Because clubs can never win a trick when another suit is led, playing the matching picture club is a guaranteed gift: it lands in whoever wins the trick. The exception applies only to J, Q and K of clubs, only when the same rank (any suit) is already in the trick, and it is optional — following suit normally remains legal. Number clubs get no such escape: they leave your hand only when you are void in the led suit, when clubs themselves are led, or when a lockup randomly removes them.

A worked trick: West leads the Q♦, North follows with the 2♦, East — holding the Q♣ and seeing a queen on the table — plays the Q♣ instead of following diamonds, and you follow with the A♦. Your ace is the highest diamond, so you win the trick, one club and all: you score the point but you are locked out of the next trick. East just converted a dead queen into a turn stolen from you. Ducking under West's queen would have cost you a point and saved you a trick — often the better trade.

Being locked up

Win a trick that contains clubs and you are locked up for exactly as many tricks as it held clubs:

While locked up you do not play at all. On each trick you sit out, one card is picked from your hand at random and thrown away — it never reaches the table and counts for nothing. The trick is played by the remaining players with fewer cards in it, and the lead passes to the left past any locked player. The tricks played while you are benched are tricks — and points — you can never get back, and the random discards can strip winners straight out of your hand.

Locks cannot stack: a locked player never plays a card, so they cannot win a club trick while serving a sentence. The count simply ticks down one per trick until they rejoin.

The arithmetic of a lock is brutal. In a four-player hand you contest roughly a quarter of the remaining tricks; a two-trick lock therefore costs you about half a point in expectation, plus two random cards — and the randomness is the real sting, because a stripped ace or the last card of a suit you were saving can wreck the rest of your hand. Meanwhile the three seated players split the benched tricks between them, so your lock is directly worth points to everyone else.

Scoring

Scoring is the simplest part: every trick you win is worth exactly one point, clubs or no clubs. The 13 tricks of each hand are worth 13 points (a trick abandoned because every seated player was locked scores nobody). Points from each hand add to your running game total. Clubs cost you nothing directly — no minus points — they cost you turns, which in a game where tricks are points is usually worse.

Hands are dealt and played back to back, the deal rotating, until the game-end condition below is met at the end of a hand.

Winning the game

The game ends when, at the end of a hand, at least one player has 20 or more points — with one crucial condition: there must be a sole leader. If two or more players share the top score when the threshold is reached, the game continues with further full hands until a single player stands highest. A finished game of Lockup therefore always has exactly one winner.

This continuation rule shapes the endgame: at 19-all, a clever club dump that denies an opponent a point is worth as much as a trick of your own, because neither of you can win while level.

Expect a game to run five to seven hands: only 13 points exist per hand and they are split four ways, so even a dominant player averages four or five points a deal. That pace is why a single two-trick lock — roughly half a point of expectation plus two random cards — is a genuinely large swing over the course of a game.

Edge cases & fine print

• Dumping a club does not lock you — the lock lands on whoever wins the trick. Feeding clubs into tricks other players win is the whole offensive game.
• A club can win a trick only when clubs are led — which requires a player whose entire hand is clubs. Then everyone with clubs must follow, and the highest club takes the trick (and its winner is locked for every club in it, up to four).
• Every player can be locked at once. The trick is then empty: nobody plays, nobody scores it, every lock ticks down by one, and the lead resumes with the first unlocked player to the left.
• Locked discards are random and gone. Neither you nor the other players choose which card leaves a locked hand; it is removed from the game unseen by the trick.
• The lock countdown is exact: "locked for three" means you miss precisely the next three tricks — the count ticks down as each trick completes, including empty ones.
• The picture-club exception matches rank only. A jack on the table legalises the J♣ but never the Q♣ or K♣; a ten or ace on the table legalises nothing.
• Hands run their full length. Even when a player has passed 20 mid-hand, the hand is finished and only then is the score checked.

Variants

This is cardgames.io's solitary Lockup exactly: four players for themselves, no trump, one point a trick, first sole leader at 20 wins, random discards while locked. Things you might expect from related games that are not part of Lockup:

• No partnerships — it is every player for themselves, unlike Whist or Spades.
• No trump suit and no bidding — the led suit always rules the trick.
• No minus points for clubs — unlike Hearts' penalty cards, clubs cost turns, not score.
• No choosing your locked discard — some home rules let the locked player pick; here it is always random.
• No shortened games — the target is always 20 points with the sole-leader condition.

Frequently asked questions

Related rulebooks

• Manni rules — icelandic 3-player tricks with a 16-card kitty
• Hearts rules — avoid hearts and the queen of spades
• Whist rules — classic tricks, rotating trump, first to 7
• Oh Hell! rules — bid your tricks exactly — no more, no less