Manni rules

The cut & the contract

Before each deal the deck is cut and the revealed card sets the contract for the whole hand. Nobody bids — the deck decides:

The cut card is not set aside: it goes to the bottom of the deck and is therefore the very last card dealt — it always lands in the dealer's hand. Everyone at the table knows one card the dealer holds, a small but real information leak that experienced players track.

Setup & dealing

Manni is a three-player game with no partnerships. The first dealer is chosen at random and the deal rotates left each hand. The deal is 4-3-3-3: four cards face down to the middle of the table, then three to each player, and that pattern repeats four times. The result is 12 cards per player and a 16-card face-down pile in the middle — the Manni (the "chap") that gives the game its name.

In our game you play against Ásta and Hjörtur. Each hand is twelve tricks, and each player is measured against the same fixed target of four tricks — there is no bidding of any kind.

The exchange (Manni's "bidding" phase)

Before play, each player in turn may improve their hand from the Manni: throw away any number of cards up to their allowance and draw the same number off the top of the pile. Discards are placed face down and are out of the game for good — they belong to no one and are never revealed.

Exchanging zero cards is always legal. If the first two players both swap their maximum, 7 + 5 = 12 cards are gone and the dealer's allowance is the remaining 4; if they swap less, the dealer may take more — up to 12, the size of a hand. Cards left in the Manni after the dealer's turn stay face down and never enter play, so in most hands several cards of the deck are simply absent. Under Nullo the exchange works the same way, but you will want to throw the opposite cards: kings and queens out, aces kept.

Trick play

The player to the dealer's left leads the first trick. Play is plain Whist: you must follow suit if you can; when void you may play anything, including a trump. A trick is won by the highest trump in it or, if none was played (or the contract has no trump), by the highest card of the led suit. The winner leads next. Trump may be led at any time — there is no breaking rule.

Under Nullo two things change: there is no trump at all, and the ace is the lowest card of every suit — the king is the highest. A bare ace can duck under anything; a king is a trick magnet. Twelve tricks are played in every hand regardless of contract.

With three players a trick holds only three cards, which makes voids more common and more powerful than in four-handed games — under a suit contract, an exchange that empties a side suit often converts directly into two or three ruffs. And because up to sixteen cards sit out of every hand (the discards plus the untouched Manni), no suit can be counted to thirteen: the honest maximum you can pin down is what you have seen played plus what you hold.

Scoring

Every player is scored against the same par of four tricks (three players × four = twelve tricks). Under a trump or no-trump contract you get +1 plus point for each trick above four and 1 minus point for each trick below four. Under Nullo it is exactly reversed: +1 for each trick *below* four, −1 for each above. Taking exactly four tricks scores nothing at all.

Crucially, plus and minus points are tallied in separate columns — they do not cancel as the game goes along. A player can hold 9 plus points and 7 minus points at once. The plus column alone decides when the game ends; the minus column only bites at the very end.

Winning the game

The game ends at the end of any hand in which a player's plus points have reached 10 or more. At that moment every player computes their net total — plus points minus minus points — and the highest net total wins. It is not automatically the player who triggered the end: reaching 10 plus with 6 minus (net 4) loses to an opponent sitting on 7 plus and 1 minus (net 6). If two or three players tie on the highest net, they share the win.

This two-column structure is the strategic heart of Manni: plus points are a clock, minus points are a debt, and the player racing the clock is not always the player winning the game.

Edge cases & fine print

• The cut card is dealt to the dealer. It goes to the bottom of the deck and arrives as the dealer's final card — a public card in a private hand.
• Par is a dead zone: exactly four tricks scores neither plus nor minus under any contract.
• A scoreless hand is possible: the twelve tricks can split exactly 4-4-4, in which case nobody scores anything and the game simply continues with the next deal.
• Discards and the leftover Manni never return. Both leave the game unseen, so suits are often shorter than the raw odds suggest — remember what you threw.
• The dealer's allowance is what remains (minimum 4, up to 12 if the others barely swapped) — capped at the 12-card hand size.
• Aces are low only under Nullo — and in every suit at once. Under the other contracts the ace is the highest card as usual.
• Reaching 10 plus does not guarantee victory. The end is triggered by the plus column, but the win goes to the best net score after subtracting minus points.
• Ties share the win — there is no playoff hand.

Variants

What we play is Hornafjarðar Manni exactly as cardgames.io implements it — the cut-card contract, the 4-3-3-3 deal, the 7/5/rest exchange and the ±1-per-trick scoring to 10 plus points. Manni is a living Icelandic folk game with many local versions, so be aware of what this one is not:

• Other regional Manni variants differ in the exchange allowances, the par, and how Nullo is triggered — house tables in Iceland rarely agree on all three.
• Sergeant Major / 8-5-3 — the related three-player family gives each seat a *different* trick target (8, 5 and 3) and no cut-card contract. Manni's par is the same four for everyone.
• Cancelling columns — some scorekeepers net plus and minus after every hand. Here the columns stay separate until the game ends, which changes endgame tactics.
• Chosen trump — there is no bidding or trump-picking in any form; the cut is final.

Frequently asked questions

Related rulebooks

• Lockup rules — win a club trick and sit one out
• Whist rules — classic tricks, rotating trump, first to 7
• Spades rules — bid your tricks — team up against the ai
• Euchre rules — bowers, trump and 5-trick showdowns