Six new card games: Spades, Euchre, Oh Hell, Call Break, Whist and Court Piece
Black Queen started as one game. This week it became a small card room: six more games you can start in your browser, with friends or bots, on the same table you already know. There is nothing to download and no account to make.
The same table, a different game
Every game uses the same screen: your hand along the bottom, flick a card up to play it, points that fly to whoever won the trick, and bots that fill any empty seat. If you can play one game here you can sit down at any of them. The rules for each are one tap away, under How to play in the menu.
The six games
- Spades (4 players, two teams). Bid how many tricks you expect to take; spades are always trump. Make your bid and every trick scores, but ten extra tricks ("bags") cost you 100. Bid Nil and take nothing for a bonus. First team to 500 wins.
- Euchre (4 players, two teams). A short deck, five cards each, and one turned up. Order it up or name your own trump, hold the bowers (the two top Jacks), and try to euchre the other side. First to 10.
- Oh Hell (3 to 6 players). Bid exactly how many tricks you will take, from seven cards down to one and back up. The dealer is not allowed to bid the number that would make everyone right, so somebody always misses.
- Call Break (4 players). Played all over Nepal and India. Spades are trump, you must beat the cards on the table when you can, and five rounds decide the winner.
- Whist (4 players, two teams). No bidding at all: the dealer's last card is trump and every trick over six scores a point. An ancestor of Spades, Oh Hell and several others above.
- Court Piece (4 players, two teams). Also called Rang or Hokm. You see only five cards before trump is named, then the rest are dealt. Win seven tricks to take the hand, or all thirteen for a Court.
The bots
Each game has its own bot, built to play the way a careful person would: it only looks at its own hand, the cards already played and the bids, never at anyone else's cards. In our own tests against a player who just throws random legal cards, the bots win between about 91% and 100% of the games, depending on the game (97% in Spades, 98 to 99% in Whist, Euchre and Court Piece). Against people they are friendly sparring partners, not world champions, which is the point of an empty seat.
What is next
Twenty-Nine (a bidding game with a secret trump) is built and being finished. After that we want to bring in games where you do not play tricks: Crazy Eights, and then rummy. If there is a game your family plays that is missing, tell us in the new community, on the Ideas board.
Play now
Pick a game from the games list, type a name, share the room code and press Start. Games are free and nothing is recorded about you apart from the name you type, for a few hours after the last move. The details are in the privacy notice.