What is a trick-taking game?
Everyone plays one card in turn, and those four cards are a trick. You must play a card of the suit that was led if you have one. The highest card of that suit takes the trick, unless somebody who had none of the suit played a trump, and whoever takes the trick leads to the next one. That is the whole engine, and it drives hundreds of card games.
What changes from game to game is what the tricks are for. Here you play each one against three computer players: Mabel on your left, Otto across the table and June on your right.
The one where you try to lose
Hearts has no trumps, no bidding and no partner, which makes it the easiest of the three to pick up. Every heart you take costs a point and the queen of spades costs thirteen, so the skill is in ducking tricks and passing your danger on to somebody else. Unless you take every point there is, which is called shooting the moon and turns the hand upside down. Lowest score wins when someone reaches 100.
The one where you keep a promise
Spades is played in pairs: you and Otto against Mabel and June. Before each hand you say how many tricks you expect to take, and your side must take at least as many as the two of you bid. Spades are always trumps. Take too few and you lose the lot; take too many, too often, and the extras cost you as well. First side to 500 wins.
The one that is over in five tricks
Euchre is also played in pairs, with only 24 cards and five tricks to a hand. One card is turned up and the players decide in turn whether its suit will be trumps. The side that chooses has to win three of the five tricks or be “euchred”. The two jacks of the trump colour, the bowers, outrank everything. First side to 10 points wins.
At a glance
| Game | Sides | Cards | Trumps | A hand | The winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hearts | Everyone for themselves | 52 | None | 13 tricks | Lowest score when someone reaches 100 |
| Spades | You and Otto against Mabel and June | 52 | Spades, always | 13 tricks | First side to 500 |
| Euchre | You and Otto against Mabel and June | 24 | Chosen each hand | 5 tricks | First side to 10 |
A game of any of the three usually runs to about eleven hands. In Euchre those hands are five tricks each, so a whole game is less than half the length of the other two.
Which should I start with?
- New to trick-taking? Start with Hearts. There is nothing to learn beyond following suit, and the cards you may not play are dimmed.
- Played Hearts and want more? Spades adds trumps, a bid to live up to and a partner to think about.
- Short of time? Euchre. The rules about the jacks take a hand or two to sink in, and after that it is the quickest of the three.
The words you will meet
- Lead: to play the first card of a trick. The suit of that card is the suit led.
- Follow suit: to play a card of the suit led. You must if you can.
- Void: having no cards of a suit. When that suit is led you may play anything.
- Trump: a suit that beats the other three. A trump played on a trick wins it unless a higher trump is played.
- Broken: in Hearts you cannot lead a heart, and in Spades you cannot lead a spade, until one has been played on an earlier trick.
- Bid: in Spades, the number of tricks you say you will take. A bid of nil says you will take none.
- Bag: in Spades, a trick taken beyond your bid. Every tenth one costs 100 points.
- Bower: in Euchre, a jack of the trump colour. The jack of trumps is the right bower and the other jack of that colour is the left.
- Going alone: in Euchre, playing a hand without your partner for a bigger prize.
- Shooting the moon: in Hearts, taking all thirteen hearts and the queen of spades, so that everyone else scores 26 and you score nothing.
Mabel, Otto and June
The three computer players sit in the same seats in every game, and Otto is your partner in Spades and Euchre. They play a sensible, steady game and they play fair: each one sees only what a person in that seat would see, which is their own cards and what has been played. Otto does not know your hand, and nobody signals.
What every game here has
- Hint, which suggests a card when you are not sure.
- Dimmed cards. When it is your turn, the cards the rules do not allow are greyed out.
- A slip-proof tap. On a phone the first tap lifts a card and the second plays it.
- Scores, hand by hand, behind the Scores button.
- Your game is kept. Close the page in the middle of a hand and it is still there when you come back, on the same device.