Oh Hell! rules

Setup & the round schedule

Four players play for themselves — no partnerships. A game is exactly 19 rounds on the classic "down and up" schedule: 10 cards each in round 1, then 9, 8, 7 and so on down to a single card in round 10, then back up one at a time to 10 cards in round 19.

The first dealer is chosen at random and the deal rotates one seat left every round. After the cards are dealt, the top card of the undealt remainder is turned face up, and its suit is trump for the round. Even in the ten-card rounds only 40 cards are dealt, so there is always a card left to turn. The turned card itself stays out of play, visible beside the table for the whole round.

Every round is dealt from a freshly shuffled full deck, so card-counting carries over within a round but never between rounds.

Bidding & the hook

Starting with the player left of the dealer and going clockwise, each player bids the number of tricks they expect to take — anything from 0 up to the number of cards in the hand. Bids are open: everyone hears them, and they matter, because the scoring pays for precision rather than volume.

The dealer always bids last, and is subject to the hook: the dealer may not make a bid that would bring the four bids to a total exactly equal to the number of tricks in the round. In a 7-card round where the first three players bid 2, 3 and 1 (total 6), the dealer may bid anything except 1. This guarantees the bids never balance perfectly — at least one player must fail their bid every single round. If the first three bids already exceed the round size, no total can land exactly on it and the dealer bids freely.

Bid with the trump suit in front of you. High trumps are near-certain tricks because they cannot be ruffed away; side-suit aces are strong but mortal (any void opponent can trump them); kings need their suit to go around once safely. And weigh position: bidding after two opponents have announced big numbers tells you the tricks you were counting on will be contested.

Trick play

The player to the dealer's left leads the first trick, regardless of the bids. 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 by the highest card of the led suit if nobody trumped. Aces are high. The winner of each trick leads the next.

• Trumps may be led at any time — there is no breaking rule. You can lead trump on the very first trick.
• Trumping is optional when void; discarding a side suit is equally legal.
• In the one-card round there is nothing to decide during play: everyone's single card is played to one trick, and the bidding (with the turned trump showing) is the entire game.

Play in Oh Hell! has a rhythm all its own: half the table is usually trying to lose tricks. A player who has already made their bid throws the highest card that still loses (burning honours while ducking), while a player still short of their bid wins as cheaply as position allows. Watching who fights and who folds tells you everyone's standing without looking at the bid counters.

Scoring

Oh Hell! scoring here follows the cardgames.io convention: tricks are always worth something, and the bonus rewards precision. At the end of each round every player scores 1 point per trick taken, plus a 10-point bonus if their tricks exactly equal their bid. Missing your bid does not wipe out your trick points — it only costs you the bonus.

Notice the shape of the incentive: an exact bid of N is worth 10 + N, so bigger made bids do score more — but the 10-point bonus dwarfs the trick points. Making a zero bid (10 points) beats missing a five bid by a mile, and a single unwanted trick on a zero bid costs you nine points of value.

A worked round, 4 cards each: the bids come in 1, 2, 0, and the dealer — hooked out of bidding 1 — bids 2, making the total 5 bids for 4 tricks. Play resolves 2, 1, 0, 1. The first player bid 1 and took 2: scores 2. The second bid 2 and took 1: scores 1. The zero bidder ducked everything: scores 10. The dealer bid 2 and took 1: scores 1. The over-bid table meant a fight for tricks, and the only player who read it right was the one who refused to fight at all.

Winning the game

After round 19 the scores are final and the highest total wins. There is no playoff round: if two or more players tie for the top score, they share the win. A rough benchmark: hitting your bid in every round with modest bids lands around 200 points, so a total in that region is championship form.

Between rounds the running totals are always visible, which changes late-game bidding: a trailing player should bid aggressively in the big final rounds (a made 6-bid is 16 points), while a leader can grind out safe small bids and let the hook punish everyone else.

Edge cases & fine print

• The hook binds only the dealer — the first three bidders may bid anything from 0 to the hand size.
• The hook can vanish: if the first three bids already total more than the round size, no dealer bid can even the books, so the dealer is unrestricted.
• The turned card is out of play. Its suit fixes trump, but the card itself is never dealt or drawn — in a heart-trump round, only 12 other hearts are live at most.
• Missed bids still score tricks. Bid 3, take 6: you score 6. This version never gives zero for a missed bid.
• Bidding zero is a real strategy: 0 bid + 0 tricks = 10 points, the same bonus as any other made bid, and it is often the percentage play in the 1–3 card rounds.
• Everyone can fail, but not everyone can succeed. The hook makes total bids ≠ total tricks, so at least one player misses their bid every round — it is mathematically impossible for all four to hit.
• Ties share the win after round 19 — there is no tiebreaker hand.

Variants

We play the cardgames.io ruleset exactly: 4 players, 19 rounds from 10 down to 1 and back, turned-card trump, dealer hook, and 10-plus-tricks scoring. Common variants from home play that are not used here:

• All-or-nothing scoring — 10 + bid only when exact, zero otherwise. Here you always keep 1 point per trick.
• Progressive bonuses (e.g. 10 + bid², or 5 + 2 per trick). Not used.
• One-way schedules — some tables play only down (10→1) or only up. Here it is always the full 19-round river.
• No-trump top rounds — playing the largest hands without trump. Every round here has a turned trump.
• Hook-free bidding — casual games often skip the dealer restriction. Here the hook always applies.
• 3–7 players — the schedule adapts in home play; this version is fixed at four.

Frequently asked questions

Related rulebooks

• Whist rules — classic tricks, rotating trump, first to 7
• Spades rules — bid your tricks — team up against the ai
• Hearts rules — avoid hearts and the queen of spades
• Lockup rules — win a club trick and sit one out