Amerikaner

Players and equipment

Four is the normal game, and the best one — this is the version the rest of How to play describes. Three or five both work, with the deal and the minimum bid adjusted; Variations below has the numbers. You need a standard 52-card pack, ranking A-K-Q-J-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2 in every suit from high to low. Deal and play both go clockwise.

The deal

Draw for the first dealer; after that the deal passes to your left every hand. Shuffle, let the player on your right cut, then deal the cards out one at a time until everybody holds twelve. The four left over go face down in the middle as the kitty.

Play

Bidding opens with whoever sits to the dealer's left and goes round the table from there: on your turn you pass, or name a number higher than the last one bid. A number is a promise — you and a partner, found during the play, undertake to win that many of the twelve tricks between you. Six is the lowest opening bid, and since there are only twelve tricks, the only way past twelve is the one special bid above it: Amerikaner, an undertaking to win every single trick alone, with no partner and no help.

Keep going round until three players in a row have passed — the fourth, holding the highest bid, has won the right to play the hand. If all four pass before anybody bids at all, throw the cards in and deal again. Once you have passed you are out of the bidding for that hand; you cannot come back in with a higher number later.

The winning bidder picks up the kitty without showing it to the table, then discards the same number of cards face down — from the hand, from the kitty, or any mix of the two — so the count comes back to twelve.

The bidder leads to the first trick. A numbered bid turns the suit led into trumps for the hand, and in the same breath the bidder names a card of that suit they do not hold — usually its highest — calling for a partner. Whoever actually holds that card must play it to this first trick, and from that moment on is the bidder's partner for the rest of the hand, playing to win tricks alongside them whether they wanted the job or not. An Amerikaner bid changes this: the bidder leads with no trumps at all and no partner, playing the whole hand alone against the other three.

From there it is ordinary trick play. Follow suit if you can; if you cannot, play anything. The highest trump takes the trick, or the highest card of the suit led if nobody has played a trump; whoever wins a trick leads the next one.

Scoring

Each hand is one row on the score table. Everybody who played it enters their own result into their own column — the bidder and the partner each type in the bid they made, or the loss it cost them; everybody else types in the tricks they personally took. Nobody fills in a square that is not theirs; only the host may correct one.

A made bid scores the bidder and the partner the number bid, each in full; a failed one costs them that same number, each. Everybody not on the bidding side scores one point for every trick they won, whatever happened to the bid — their score never depends on how the bidding side did. Winning every trick alone on an Amerikaner call is worth 52 made, or 52 lost if even a single trick gets away.

A made bid

the number bid

bidder and partner, each

A failed bid

minus the number bid

bidder and partner, each

Any other trick

1

its winner

A made Amerikaner

52

the bidder alone

A failed Amerikaner

−52

the bidder alone

SquareScores deals no cards and sees none of the bidding — it only keeps the running total you tell it. The sheet takes whole numbers from zero up, so a made bid or a trick won types in exactly as it stands — but a failed bid's loss is a minus the cell cannot hold. The workaround tables use: enter 0 for that hand and carry the shortfall in your head, then enter 0 again for each later hand (a made bid or tricks won as a defender) until those points have paid it off, and enter only what is left over after that. While you still owe, your real total is the sheet's figure minus what you owe, and that real total decides whether anybody has reached 52 and who is highest at the end. It is an honest compromise rather than the real arithmetic, and whether the sheet should learn a minus for a game built this way is a question for a person, not a table.

A worked hand

North bids 8, and the called card turns out to be in West's hand. Between them North and West take 9 of the 12 tricks — enough to make the bid — while East takes 2 and South takes 1.

North

+8

made the bid of 8, as bidder

West

+8

made the bid of 8, as partner

East

+2

tricks won

South

+1

tricks won

A little later in the same sitting, North bids 8 again and this time it is South's card that gets called. North and South manage only 7 tricks between them — one short — while West takes 3 and East takes 2.

North

0

bid 8 with South as partner, fell a trick short; 0 entered, 8 owed

South

0

partner on the failed bid; 0 entered, 8 owed

West

+3

tricks won

East

+2

tricks won

Ending

The hand that takes somebody's running total to 52 or beyond is the last one — stop the moment it is scored, even partway through what would otherwise have been a longer sitting. Whoever is highest at that point wins. An Amerikaner call that comes off jumps the bidder straight up by 52, which wins the game outright unless they were sitting on a large enough negative score beforehand that the jump still falls short of the line. If the table wants to stop sooner than that, End match is any player's to tap, not only whoever is ahead.

Bid on the suit you can carry alone, not the hand you hope for

You will not see your partner's cards until the first trick falls, so a bid should stand up even if the help you get turns out thin. Count your own winners in a long suit before you open the bidding in it: if you can take six or seven tricks unaided with it as trumps, a bid of eight or nine is a reasonable risk; if you are relying on a partner to make up more than two or three tricks, you are gambling on a card you have not called yet.

Watch for the called card, not just the trumps

The whole table learns who the partner is the moment that card lands on the first trick, so use it to size up what you are facing. If the second-highest card of the called suit is still out after that trick, the bidder probably called a card they could afford to lose rather than their one safe winner — which tells you something about how thin the rest of their hand really is.

Discard to protect your calling suit

You pick up the kitty blind, so your first job as bidder is deciding what to throw away before anybody has seen it. Keep every card in the suit you plan to call from, and every trump; the safest discards are low cards in a suit you hold only one or two of, since those were tricks you were going to lose to the defence anyway.

Save the Amerikaner call for a hand with no weak suit at all

Winning every trick alone, with no partner and no trumps, means you cannot afford one suit the table can run you out of — a single short suit is one opponent's chance to simply outlast you in it once the others have none left either. The swing is the full 52 points either way, so a near miss costs as much as a clean win pays, and that is not a bid to make on a merely good hand.

Score your own tricks even when you are not bidding

Every trick you win as a defender is a point, whatever happens to the bid, so playing purely to deny the bidding side is not always the right instinct. If you can take a safe trick without risking one of theirs, take it: a hand where you finish with three tricks and the bid still succeeds anyway is still three points you would not otherwise have had.

Three or five at the table

With three players, deal sixteen cards each and keep a four-card kitty, and the lowest opening bid rises to eight. With five, deal ten each with only two in the kitty, and the lowest bid drops to five. Everything else about the bidding, the calling and the scoring plays exactly as it does at four.

Showing the kitty

Some tables make the bidder turn the kitty face up for everyone to see before picking it up, rather than taking it unseen. It costs the bidder the advantage of a hidden adjustment and hands the defence a little more to play against.

The kitty as an extra trick

Some count the kitty itself as one more trick belonging to the bidder, on top of whatever is actually taken in play, and raise the lowest opening bid by one to balance it.

Playing without a kitty

Deal out the whole pack instead: thirteen each at four players, with the minimum bid rising to seven since there are now thirteen tricks instead of twelve. At three players, take a two out of the deck first so fifty-one cards split evenly into seventeen-card hands (minimum bid nine); at five, take two twos out for fifty cards split into ten-card hands (minimum bid five).

Jokers instead of trimming the deck

Some tables would rather add cards than take them away: two jokers with three players, three with five, even a six-player version carrying two jokers and nine cards each. A joker led to a trick wins it outright, and the others may play any card they like to it, whether or not they could follow suit; a player holding none of the suit led may throw a joker away harmlessly, and played that way it has no power at all.

The unbeatable two

Some play that a two led to a trick cannot be beaten by anything, trumps included — everyone must still follow suit if they can, but the two wins regardless.

Naming a different trump, or none at all

Some let the bidder, on leading to the first trick, name a trump suit other than the one actually led — or call "Grand" and play the whole hand with no trumps at all. The partner is still called for in the ordinary way: a card of whichever suit was led, whoever holds it.

Splitting the bid unevenly between bidder and partner

Rather than scoring the same number to both of them, some tables make the bidder carry twice the risk and twice the reward: the bidder scores double the bid, made or lost, and the partner scores the plain amount. Others split it the other way, with the bidder scoring the bid in full and the partner scoring half of it, rounded up.

Playing on when everybody passes

Rather than throwing the hand in when nobody will bid, some tables play it anyway with no trumps at all, and everybody scores −1 for every trick they take instead of nothing.

How many cards do you deal in Amerikaner?

Twelve each at the usual four-player table, with four left over as the kitty. Three players get sixteen each and a four-card kitty; five players get ten each and a two-card kitty.

What is the Amerikaner bid?

It is the highest bid available, above bidding all twelve tricks, and it means winning every single trick alone, with no partner and no trumps at all. It scores the bidder 52 points if it comes off, and costs them 52 if even one trick gets away.

How do you get a partner in Amerikaner?

Whoever wins a numbered bid names a card of the trump suit they do not hold — usually its highest — and whoever actually holds that card must play it to the first trick and becomes the bidder's partner for the rest of the hand, like it or not; you never choose your own partner.

What happens if everyone passes on the first round of bidding?

The cards are thrown in and there is a new deal. Some tables prefer to play the hand anyway, with no trumps and everybody docked a point for every trick they take, rather than redealing — see Variations above.

Is Amerikaner the same game as Kani?

They are close cousins rather than the same game. Kani is the Icelandic version, and it changes the scoring enough to be worth its own entry rather than a variation here: nobody is scored a loss when a bid fails in Kani, because the opponents simply score what the bidding side would have lost instead.

How do you win Amerikaner?

By being the player with the highest running total the moment anybody's total reaches 52 or more. That can happen gradually, hand after ordinary hand, or all at once if somebody calls Amerikaner and wins every trick in the deal.