Whist rules

Setup & dealing

Whist is played by four players in two partnerships, partners sitting opposite. In our game you (South) partner Freyja (North) against Magnús (West) and Einar (East). The full 52-card deck is dealt out, 13 cards to each player, every hand. Aces are high throughout: within a suit the order is A, K, Q, J, 10 … 2.

The opening lead rotates: you lead the first trick of the first hand, and the lead for each new hand moves one seat to the left (West leads hand two, and so on). Within a hand, of course, whoever wins a trick leads the next one.

The rotating trump suit

Traditional Whist turns up the dealer's last card to fix trumps. This version uses the fixed rotation popular online (and used by cardgames.io), so everyone always knows the trump suit before the hand starts:

The current trump is displayed at the top of the table for the whole hand. On the no-trump hand there is no ruffing at all: a trick can only be won by the suit that was led, which makes long suits and high cards decisive.

Knowing the trump before you see your cards changes nothing about the deal but everything about how you read it. Thirteen trumps are in play every trump hand, split randomly around the table; counting them as they fall is the single most valuable habit in Whist, because the moment the last enemy trump is gone your side-suit winners can no longer be ruffed away.

Trick play

The leader of a trick may play any card in their hand — including a trump, at any time. There is no "breaking" rule in Whist: unlike Spades or Hearts, trumps may be led from the very first trick. Each other player in clockwise order must follow suit if they hold a card of the led suit; a player void in that suit may play anything, including a trump.

The trick is won by the highest trump played to it; if nobody trumped, by the highest card of the led suit. Cards of other suits can never win a trick, no matter how high. The winner of a trick leads the next one, and the hand runs for exactly 13 tricks.

• Following suit is mandatory — the game will only offer you cards of the led suit while you hold any.
• Trumping is never mandatory — when void, discarding a side-suit card is just as legal as ruffing.
• Overtrumping is never required — you may play a low trump under an opponent's higher trump if you wish (it still loses).
• Partners' tricks pool together — it makes no difference which member of the team wins a trick.

A worked trick, spades trump: you lead the A♦, West follows with the 3♦, your partner follows with the 7♦, and East — void in diamonds — ruffs with the 2♠. East wins: the lowliest trump beats the mightiest side-suit ace. Had East instead discarded a club, your ace would have held. This single pattern — aces are only as safe as the opponents' suit lengths — is most of what separates Whist players.

When two players are void in the led suit, both may trump, and the higher trump wins; the led suit stops mattering the moment any trump appears. On the no-trump hand this whole layer vanishes: a void player can only discard, so the highest card of the led suit wins every single trick, and the game becomes a pure contest of suit length, entries and timing.

Scoring

After the 13th trick, each team counts its tricks. Six tricks — the "book" — score nothing; every trick beyond six scores one point. Since the two teams share 13 tricks, exactly one team scores in every hand (7–6 gives one point; 13–0 gives seven).

There are no honours points, no rubber bonuses and no penalties in this version — the trick count is the whole score. That purity is what makes Whist the cleanest introduction to trick-taking play: every decision at the table is worth some fraction of a trick, and every trick past the book is worth exactly one point.

The scoring shape rewards big hands disproportionately in feel if not in arithmetic. A 7-6 squeaker and a 10-3 rout both happen off the same thirteen tricks, but the rout scores four points — more than half the game — while the squeaker scores one. Ruthlessly converting a strong trump fit into overtricks, rather than settling for the seventh trick, is how games end in five hands instead of nine.

Winning the game

Hands are played, with the trump suit rotating each time, until one team reaches 7 points at the end of a hand. That team wins immediately. Because only one team can score in any given hand, ties are impossible: the two teams can never cross seven together, so a finished game always has a clear winner.

A game therefore lasts at least one hand (a 13-0 sweep) and typically five to nine hands. The full trump cycle usually comes around at least once, so both trump play and no-trump play decide every game — a team that only knows how to ruff will give its lead back on every fifth hand.

The fixed rotation also makes the score readable in a way turn-up Whist never is: at 6–5 you know exactly which trump the deciding hands will be played under. Holding a diamond-heavy hand of cards matters twice as much when the diamond hand is the one that can end the game.

Edge cases & fine print

• Trumps can be led at any time — even the very first trick of the hand. There is no breaking rule.
• No-trump hands cannot be ruffed. On every fifth hand, being void in the led suit only lets you discard; nothing beats the led suit.
• Exactly one team scores per hand. With 13 tricks split two ways, one side always has 7 or more — a hand is never scoreless.
• The lead rotates by hand, not by a dealer button. Hand one starts with you; each following hand starts one seat further left, independent of who won the previous hand.
• No honours, no revoke penalties. Traditional Whist fines a revoke three tricks; here a revoke is impossible because only legal cards can be played.
• Scores never decrease. There are no negative points in this ruleset, so the game state is simply a race from 0 to 7.

Variants

What we play matches cardgames.io's Whist exactly: 13 tricks, the H-S-D-C-no-trump rotation, one point per trick over six, first team to seven. Notable traditional variants not used here:

• Turn-up trump — the dealer's final card is exposed to set trumps. Replaced here by the fixed rotation, which removes the dealer's one-card advantage.
• Honours scoring — points for holding the A, K, Q, J of trumps. Not counted.
• Rubber Whist — playing to 5 points across a best-of-three rubber. Here it is a single game to 7.
• Bid Whist, Solo Whist, Oh Hell — auction-based descendants where you contract for tricks. If you want bidding on top of this trick play, those are separate games (we host Spades and Oh Hell!).

Frequently asked questions

Related rulebooks

• Spades rules — bid your tricks — team up against the ai
• Hearts rules — avoid hearts and the queen of spades
• Oh Hell! rules — bid your tricks exactly — no more, no less
• Manni rules — icelandic 3-player tricks with a 16-card kitty