500

Players and equipment

Four players, two against two with partners sitting opposite each other. Shuffle a forty-three card pack — ace down to four in the red suits, ace down to five in the black suits, and one joker. Call the joker the bird if you like; Australian packs often draw it as a kookaburra. Whenever there's a trump suit, the bird outranks everything, followed by the jack of the trump suit (the right bower) and the jack of the other suit of the same colour (the left bower), then ace down through the ordinary cards. The suit sharing trumps' colour hands its jack over to serve as the left bower, so it has no jack of its own while that suit stays trumps.

The deal

Deal, bid and play all move clockwise, and the turn to deal moves on after every hand. Ten cards to each player and three face down in the middle for the kitty — the usual rhythm is three each, one to the kitty, four each, one to the kitty, three each, one to the kitty. Look at your hand before anybody bids.

Play

Starting on the dealer's left, each player in turn either passes or bids: a number of tricks from six to ten and a suit (or No Trumps), or Misere — undertaking to lose every trick, alone, with your partner's cards face down — or Open Misere, the same contract with your hand turned face up after the first trick. For the same number of tricks, No Trumps outranks Hearts, which outranks Diamonds, then Clubs, then Spades. Misere only comes in over a bid of seven, ranking above it and below eight; Open Misere may be bid at any point in the auction, even as the very first bid, and ranks above ten Diamonds but below ten Hearts — some tables rank it higher still, at the very top of the auction. Once you pass you're out of that auction, and bidding carries on until only one player is left in. If all four pass, throw the hand in and deal again.

The last bidder is the contractor. They pick up the three kitty cards unseen, discard any three in their place, and lead to the first trick — alone if the contract is Misere or Open Misere, their partner's hand face down and out of the play. Follow suit if you can; a trick is won by the highest trump played, or, with no trump out, by the highest card of the suit led, and its winner leads next. The bird is the fiddly card to play correctly in a No Trumps or Misere contract: if the contractor holds it, they may name a suit it belongs to before the first lead, and from then on it's the top card of that suit; if nobody claims it, it belongs to no suit at all, counts as the highest card in the pack, and is usually only playable when you're out of the suit led. In a Misere or Open Misere you must play the bird if you have no card of the suit led; in a No Trumps contract you may hold it back instead. Tables vary on the finer print here — see Variations.

Scoring

Set the table up as two sides before the first hand — SquareScores doesn't deal the kitty or see a single card, but it does need to know who's paired with whom. A round on the sheet is one hand, and once it's settled each side enters what that hand was worth to them into their own line; the host may enter or correct either side's cell, and nobody else may touch the other side's column. The running total is the race to 500, and End match is any member's tap, whenever the table agrees it's over.

Six tricks

40, 60, 80, 100, 120

Spades the cheapest suit, then Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts, No Trumps the dearest

Each trick past six

adds 100

in the same suit

Misere

250

biddable only after a seven has been bid; the bidder plays alone against both opponents

Open Misere

500

hand turned face up after the first trick

If the contractors take at least as many tricks as they bid, they score that bid's value from the table above, adding 100 for each trick bid past six; tricks taken beyond the bid score nothing extra, short of a slam. If they fall short, the bid's value comes off their side instead of going on. Either way, the defenders score ten a trick for whatever they actually won. A Misere or Open Misere is scored differently: the contractor's side scores 250 or 500 if the contractor loses every trick and loses that amount if the contractor takes one, and the defenders score nothing either way. Winning every trick on a suit or No Trumps bid worth less than 250 — a slam — scores 250 outright instead of the bid; bid eight Clubs or higher and a slam is worth no more than the bid itself.

A failed bid is the one case this game asks for a minus, and the sheet has no minus key. Where a hand would take points away, type 0 for that deal instead and remember how far short your side fell; the next time your side has a positive score to enter, take the shortfall off that hand's score and type what is left — if the shortfall is bigger than the hand just scored, type 0 again and carry the rest. Say it out loud at the table — "that's forty off the next one" — so nobody forgets by the time it matters.

A worked pair of deals

East and West bid eight Hearts, worth 300, and take all eight tricks: their side types in 300. North and South, defending, picked up the other two tricks between them, worth ten each: they type in 20. Next hand North and South bid six Spades, worth 40, but win only five of the ten tricks — the contract fails, so the 40 comes off their side rather than going on, and they type 0 while remembering the 40 they still owe. East and West, defending this time, took the other five tricks: 50 to them.

East-West, after deal one

300

300 bid made

North-South, after deal one

20

20 for defending

East-West, after deal two

350

+50 for defending

North-South, after deal two

20

0 entered, 40 still owed

North and South's next positive score has 40 taken off it before it goes in, which is why the running total still shows 20 rather than a number nobody at the table actually holds.

Ending

First side to reach 500 or more by making a bid wins outright — reaching 500 purely off ten-a-trick defending doesn't end the game; play carries on until somebody actually wins a contract past the line. A side that falls to minus 500 or worse loses the game outright — going out the back door — which the running total alone won't show once a shortfall is being carried rather than subtracted, so call it when you see it coming. End match is any member's tap, never only the host's.

Bid what the kitty might be worth, not what your hand already holds

Ten cards rarely make an eight-trick hand by themselves; the three kitty cards and your own three discards are half the contract. Count your hand as though the kitty will hand you one useful card and take away one weak one, and bid to that — overbidding on the hand you were actually dealt is the single commonest way to go backwards.

Learn to count the bowers

The bird, the right bower and the left bower are three near-certain tricks in the right suit, and a hand holding all three plus an ace or two is worth naming trumps over even a strong no-trump hand. Holding the left bower without the right is a trap: it's only a bower when somebody else chooses that colour as trumps, and an ordinary jack otherwise.

A safe eight beats a hopeful nine

Every trick short of your bid costs you the whole value of the contract, not just the missing trick, so the gap between making eight and failing nine is far bigger than the hundred points the table seems to offer for trying. Bid the number you can count on your fingers, not the number that would look impressive to your partner.

Misere is for a bad hand, not a clever one

A genuine Misere hand has no high cards to lose tricks with — low, flat, and short in at least one suit so you have somewhere to get rid of anything you're forced to follow with. Bidding Misere on a hand that holds an ace or the joker is how a 250-point contract turns into a 250-point loss.

Count the defenders' tricks too

Ten points a trick sounds small next to a 300-point bid, but four or five tricks for the defence is forty or fifty points, and you score them whether the contract makes or fails — so a side losing the bidding war should still fight for every trick it can take, rather than giving up on the hand.

Five-handed 500

Add a full standard pack plus the joker — fifty-three cards. The contractor may play alone against all four, or call a partner by naming a specific card (never the joker or a bower) without saying who holds it; the holder stays quiet until the named card is played. If the contractor calls a partner, the two of them each win or lose half the contract's value; playing alone wins or loses it in full, and scores are kept per player rather than per side. Misere and Open Misere are always played alone here, against all four opponents.

Six-handed 500

Two sides of three, partners sitting alternately round the table, with a sixty-three card pack that adds elevens, twelves and the red thirteens above the ten. Many Australian tables use this bigger pack whatever the number of players, simply leaving the extra cards out when there are fewer than six.

Three-handed and two-handed 500

At three players, drop to a thirty-three card pack (the lowest card a seven), and the two non-bidders form a side for that one hand only — scores are then kept per player rather than per side. The two-handed game uses the usual forty-three card pack and deals each player a ten-card hand plus five two-card piles, a face-down card under a face-up one, and each trick is four cards — one from hand and one face-up card from each player; it's the fiddliest version to set up and the rarest to meet at a table.

How the joker is nominated — tables vary

Some tables don't let the joker be nominated to a suit at all in a No Trumps contract, treating it as belonging to no suit from the start (it still can in Misere). Many also refuse to let it "trump" a suit you've already shown void in — once you've thrown away a diamond on another suit's lead, the joker can't later win a diamond trick for you. Agree the house rule before the first hand.

American Five Hundred

The kitty is called the widow there, still three cards, but there's only one round of bidding — everybody gets a single turn and no coming back in once they've passed. Misere is called Nullo, and the joker in a no-trump or Nullo contract can't be claimed for a suit at all; it simply stands alone and wins whatever trick it's played to.

Playing without the back door

Some tables, a well-known Tasmanian police rule set among them, give the whole bid's value to whichever side actually took it — the contractors if they made it, the opponents if the contractors failed — and drop both the minus scores and the ten-a-trick defence, racing to 1000 instead of 500. It sidesteps the sheet's zero-and-carry trick entirely, at the cost of a noticeably different-feeling game.

How many cards do you deal in 500?

Ten to each of the four players and three face down to the kitty, dealt in batches — three each, one to the kitty, four each, one to the kitty, three each, one to the kitty. The five- and six-handed games use bigger packs but deal the same way: ten each and three to the kitty.

What's the lowest and highest bid in 500?

Six Spades is the cheapest possible bid at 40 points; ten No Trumps is the most expensive suit-and-number bid at 520. Open Misere is worth 500 and ranks above ten Diamonds but below ten Hearts; some tables put it at the very top of the auction instead, sometimes scoring it 520.

Can you bid Misere in 500?

Yes, but only once somebody else has already bid seven tricks — you can't open the auction with it or jump to it over a six. It's a bid to lose every single trick, played alone with your partner's hand face down, and it's worth 250 if you manage it and minus 250 if you don't.

What does the joker do in 500?

With a trump suit named, it's simply the highest trump there is. Without one — in a No Trumps or Misere contract — the contractor, if they hold it, may claim it for a suit before the first lead; left unclaimed, it's the top card in the whole pack and can usually only be played once you're out of the suit that's been led. In a Misere or Open Misere the holder must play it the moment they're out of the suit led; in No Trumps they may hold it back instead. It's the one card worth agreeing the local house rule on before you deal the first hand.

How do you win 500?

By being the first side to reach 500 points or more as the result of actually making a bid — tricks won on defence don't get you there by themselves. A side that falls to minus 500 or worse loses the game outright — going out the back door.

Can two people play 500?

There's a genuine two-handed version with face-down-and-up card piles standing in for the missing players, but it's fiddly to deal and rarely played. Tables short of four more often play the three-handed game instead, with the two non-bidders forming a side for that one hand only.