RULES
The game is played in teams of two, north and south playing against east and west.
BIDDING STAGE
Bidding starts with the player after the dealer. Each player, in turn, bids on the number of tricks that person thinks he or she is able to make for the partnership. You must bid on your turn; passing is not allowed. Normally, acceptable bids are between 0 and 13 tricks, but be careful—if you bid 0 tricks, you must play not to win any yourself! (This is more commonly known as Nil.) Your partnership's total number of tricks cannot exceed 13. Unless one of you bid Nil, your bid tricks and your partner's bid tricks are combined to form the partnership's goal.
If you are losing by 100 or more points, I will ask your team if you wish to make a blind bid (a bid before I give you your cards)—it must either be nil or at least as high as six. Blind nil only counts for the player who agrees to make it, but blind six or higher counts as the partnership's goal and must be made exactly. After the bidding, a blind nil bidder is allowed to trade two cards with his or her partner, who bids normally during the bidding stage.
Once all four players have bid, the play of the cards starts.
PLAY OF THE CARDS
The player after the dealer leads to the first trick and may play any card other than a spade by bolding it. Each player in turn then follows suit if they are able to; otherwise, they may play any card (even a spade). The highest spade wins; if nobody has played spades, the highest card of the suit led wins.
The second through thirteenth tricks are led by the player who won the last trick. You cannot lead spades unless they've been played already or spades are all you have. If you are clearly going to win the rest of the tricks, you may post "The rest are mine", or "TRAM" for short, to speed up the game. If everyone's in agreement, I'll calculate scores then. Otherwise, play continues until all cards are put down.
SCORING
If you succeed in making your partnership's bid, you win 10 points for every trick bid plus 1 point for every overtrick. (Be careful with your overtricks, because each time you accumulate ten of them, you lose 100 points.) If you miss, you lose 10 points for every trick bid.
A successful nil earns you 100 points; an unsuccessful nil costs you 100 points and scores one overtrick point for each trick you took. Tricks earned by a nil bidder's partner count normally.
All blind bids count double by themselves; however, overtricks from a failed blind bid don't count.
The first partnership to earn 500 points or more or drive the other partnership to -500 points or less wins. If both partnerships have 500 points or more (or -500 points or less), the higher score wins. Tiebreaker hands will be played as needed.
A FEW OTHER THINGS
- Don't edit. Once you make a bid or play a card, it stands unless the rules don't let it—if that's the case, then make your correction in another post.
- If you go 48 hours without an action, I will prod you. After another 24 hours, I will replace you.
- Your PM will contain cards in both pictorial and textual form, with the text version nominally being a backup for the picture version. Since you are expected to keep track of what you've played, you may find it useful to copy and paste the text version of your hand to a separate file and delete cards from it as they are played.
- I will understand bolding any of e.g. C2, ♣2, 2C, 2♣ as shorthand for playing the two of clubs. Your PM will contain the characters for the card suits if you'd rather copy and paste those than abbreviate suits to their first letter.
- It helps to mark led cards (e.g. Lead: ♠A) and to update the number of tricks each side won after each trick (e.g. "North-South has 3/9 tricks, East-West has 1/5 tricks").
- As a rule, I'll only post as needed. If you need me for a clarification, let me know.
- And last but not least, use your common sense. Don't say anything about your hand that the other side shouldn't know about, don't hinder your partner because you want to be a jerk, etc. Play nice and play fair. I'll eject and replace players that don't.
PLAYERS
- North:Cheery Dog
- East:pirate molliereplaces RedCoyote
- South:Snakes
- West (Dealer):Radja
North and South:
62 pointsEast and West:
192 pointsREPLACEMENTS
- Axxle
Dealing Hand 1.
![:]](./images/smilies/icon_smiling.png "Cheerful Smile"){kind=icon}
That's all I care about. Would you like to bid 3 instead of 2?