Anrufen

Players and equipment

Anrufen needs exactly four of you and a short pack of twenty-four cards — ace, ten, king, queen, jack, nine in each of the four suits, nothing lower. In each suit the cards rank ace, ten, king, queen, jack, nine, high to low. The suits themselves have a pecking order too, from high to low: hearts, diamonds, spades, clubs — you only ever need it to settle a tie in the bidding. Nobody sits down already partnered. Partnerships for a hand come out of the call you are about to see, and they can be a different two people every deal.

The deal

Deal and bidding both go round to the left. The dealer shuffles, the player on the dealer's right cuts, and the whole pack goes out in batches of three until everyone holds six cards.

Starting with the player to the dealer's left, you each bid in turn: pass, or bid at least as high as whoever bid last. There are five levels, lowest first:

Simple game

majority

your side needs the majority of the points

100 points

100

your side needs at least 100, so somebody must declare a marriage

No tricks

solo

you alone must lose every trick

All tricks

Durchmarsch

you and a partner must win every trick

All tricks and 100

top bid

all tricks, with a marriage declared along the way

A bid only names its level — the suit comes out only if two of you bid the same level, in which case whoever spoke first names their suit and the later bidder must go higher in the suit order or drop out. If everybody passes, bid again around the table; if that fails too, throw the hand in and deal again.

Whoever's bid stands announces the trump suit and calls a card by its rank and suit. Whoever is holding it is now your partner for the hand — and must not say so. Watch for your own card: call one you are holding yourself and you have just bid yourself into playing alone.

Play

The winning bidder leads to the first trick. Follow suit if you can; if you cannot, you must play a trump; if you have neither, play anything. Whenever you can follow the rule, you must also try to beat the best card laid to the trick so far — holding back is not allowed if a winning card is in your hand. The trick goes to the highest trump in it, or, failing that, the highest card of the suit led, and its winner leads next.

Holding the king and queen of a suit is a marriage, and you may declare it the moment you are leading a trick — not at any other time. Lead one of the two cards (tradition says the queen) and call it: 40 if the suit is trumps, 20 if it is any other suit. The points go to your side's count as soon as you register the marriage this way.

During that same first trick, your partner may raise the bid on their turn to play — simple game up to 100 points, all tricks, or both — if the table hasn't already got there. And any opponent of the bidder who doubts the bid will be made can say "Contra" at their turn in the first trick, which simply raises what is at stake.

A "No tricks" bid plays differently: no partner, no trumps, no marriages, no raising. You still follow suit, and you still head the trick when you can, even with no trump suit to do it with — and an opponent may still say Contra.

Scoring

Ace or ten won in a trick

10 each

eight cards in the pack

The last trick

10

whoever wins it

Marriage, trumps

40

king and queen of trumps, led to declare it

Marriage, other suit

20

king and queen of any other suit

Ninety points sit in every deal before anybody declares a marriage — eight aces and tens worth ten apiece, plus ten for the last trick — and every marriage declared adds to that pool. Count up what your side took in tricks: a simple game needs the majority, a 100-points bid needs at least 100 of whatever the pool came to, "all tricks" needs every trick regardless of the count, and the top bid needs both. Falling short, even by a single point, loses the hand exactly as if you had taken nothing — there is no partial credit for getting close.

Whichever side wins the hand is paid in tokens:

Simple game

1

bid made, or beaten

100 points or all tricks

2

bid or raised to, made or beaten

100 points and all tricks

3

both bid or raised to, made or beaten

No tricks

2

the lone bidder and each opponent, either way

Contra

1 extra

said during the first trick

A "No tricks" hand settles three ways at once rather than side against side: the lone bidder enters 6 on the sheet if they lose every trick and the three opponents each enter 0; if the bidder takes even one trick, each opponent enters 2 and the bidder enters 0.

A worked hand

Alice, Ben, Cara and Dan are the table; Alice is to the dealer's left, bids a simple game, and nobody bids over her, so she names hearts as trumps. She calls the ten of hearts, and it turns out Ben is holding it — Ben is her partner, and neither of them says so until the cards fall. Early in the hand Ben, leading a trick, plays the queen of hearts and declares the marriage: 40 points, because hearts are trumps.

Aces and tens Alice and Ben won

60

six of the eight in the pack

Last trick

10

won by Alice

Marriage declared

40

king-queen of hearts, Ben's

Alice and Ben's total

110

comfortably past the 66 a majority of 130 needs

Cara and Dan's total

20

the two aces or tens they kept

A hundred and thirty points were in play once the marriage went down, and Alice and Ben took 110 of them — nowhere near a struggle for the majority a simple game asks for. Nobody said Contra, so the hand pays out at its plain rate: one token each to Alice and Ben, nothing to Cara and Dan.

Enter a hand on the sheet the moment it is settled, not before: the side that won the hand, whether the bidders made their bid or the defenders beat it, types in the tokens the hand was worth, and the side that lost types in 0. Alice and Ben would each enter 1; Cara and Dan would each enter 0. The line underneath is just the running total for the sitting, because Anrufen has no finish line to reach — SquareScores never deals a card or counts a point itself, so the four of you settle each hand out loud and only then write down what it came to. End match whenever the table is done playing; the running total is what decides who came out ahead.

Ending

Play as many hands as you like. There is no target to reach and no fixed number of deals — a sitting of Anrufen is simply as long as the table wants it to be. Any of you can end the match once you are done, and whoever has the most tokens over every hand played has had the better of it.

Weigh the call, not just the suit

Naming the trump suit is the easy half of your bid; naming the card is the half that decides your whole hand. Call a card from your strongest suit and, if luck is with you, its holder brings exactly the trumps you were short of. Call one you already hold yourself and you have bid yourself a solo hand with no warning to anyone — sometimes the right move with a monster hand, and a disaster with an ordinary one.

Play dumb until the cards say otherwise

Nobody announces who the called partner is, and the table works it out by watching what gets played. If you called the ten of spades and somebody throws a high trump on your winning trick when a low one would have done, that is worth remembering. Equally, give nothing away yourself: play your hand the way you would if you did not know who held the called card, and let your partner work it out the same way everyone else does.

Count the pool before you panic

Every marriage declared raises the total points in play, which raises what "majority" means too. A side trailing 40–50 in a plain ninety-point pool is ahead 100–50 once it registers a 40 and a 20 — the pool is now 150 and the majority 76. Keep a running count of every marriage declared, by anybody, and you will know the real target before the last trick is played.

Hold your marriage back if it costs you nothing

You may only declare a marriage while leading, so a king-queen you cannot yet lead is a marriage you cannot yet bank. There is no rush to force the lead early just to get the declaration in — wait for a trick you would have led anyway, and declare it then. The one danger is forgetting: an undeclared marriage scores nothing at all.

Decide early whether to say Contra

Contra only has a window — the first trick — so weigh the bidder's hand the moment it is made, not three tricks later when you have seen more and the chance has gone. A bid that looks thin after the calling and the first few cards led is exactly the moment to raise the stakes against it, because waiting costs you the right to.

Three plays too

Deal seven cards each instead of six and leave three face down on the table. Bidding runs as usual, but the winning bidder picks up the three hidden cards, discards any three back face down in their place, and plays entirely alone against the other two — there is no partner to call. Any ace or ten left in the discarded three counts for the two opponents, not the bidder, so think hard about what you bury.

Open marriages

A few tables play every marriage face up on the table the moment it is declared, rather than leaving the two cards in hand to be seen only as they are played. It settles any argument about whether a declaration was valid, at the cost of a little of the game's secrecy.

How many people do you need for Anrufen?

Four, in the usual game — two against two, decided fresh every hand by who the called card turns up in. A three-player version exists too, with a three-card widow dealt face down and the winning bidder playing alone against the other two.

How do you choose a partner in Anrufen?

Whoever wins the bidding names a trump suit and calls one card by its rank and suit. Whoever is holding that card is the bidder's partner for the hand, and nobody says who it is — you find out as the cards are played, same as everyone else at the table.

What happens if you call your own card?

You end up playing alone. Your whole hand is in front of you when you call, so it only happens on purpose, with a hand strong enough to make the bid without a partner's help.

How many points do you need to win a hand of Anrufen?

It depends what was bid: at least a majority of the pool for a simple game, a hundred outright for 100 points, and every single trick for the two "all tricks" bids. The pool itself grows past its base ninety every time a marriage is declared, so the majority a simple game needs grows with it.

What is a marriage worth in Anrufen?

Forty points if the suit you hold the king and queen of is trumps, twenty if it is any other suit — and only once you declare it, by leading one of the two cards while you say so. An undeclared marriage, however strong your hand, is worth nothing at all.

Can you say Contra at any point in the hand?

No. Contra is only available during the first trick. Miss that window and the stakes stand as they were bid, whatever you come to suspect about the hand later on.