Tarneeb

Players and equipment

Four players, in two fixed partnerships, sitting with your partner across the table from you. You need a standard 52-card pack, with the suits ranking high to low in each: ace, king, queen, jack, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two. Suit rank never changes, whichever suit ends up trumps.

The deal

Pick the first dealer at random; after that the deal passes to the right, and the bidding and the play go counter-clockwise, to the right, as well. Shuffle, have the cards cut, and deal every card out one at a time, so each player holds thirteen.

Play

Bidding opens with the player to the dealer's right and moves round the table from there. A bid is a number of tricks, from seven up to thirteen, and each bid must beat the one before it. Pass if you don't want to go higher; once you've passed you're out of the bidding for that hand and can't come back in. If all four of you pass on your very first turn to speak, the hand is thrown in — the same dealer shuffles and deals again.

Bidding carries on round the table, as many times round as it takes, until three players have passed and one is left. That player names the trump suit — or calls for no trumps at all — and leads to the first trick. Whoever wins a trick leads the next one.

Follow suit if you can. If you can't, play anything you like — a trump, or a card from any other suit, your choice. The highest trump played wins the trick; where nobody has played a trump, the highest card of the suit that was led wins it.

Scoring

A round on the sheet is one deal. Once the hand is played out, add a row and enter the points that deal has just earned your side, in your own side's column — the number this deal adds, not your new running total, which the sheet keeps for you. SquareScores deals no card and sees none of the bidding: it only ever reads the number your side types in once the cards are down.

What that number is depends on how the bid came out. If the bidding side took at least as many tricks as it bid, and the bid was under thirteen, its side enters the tricks it actually won — which can run ahead of the bid — and the other side enters nothing. Win every one of the thirteen tricks on a bid under thirteen and that's kaboot: add a three-point bonus on top of the tricks won, so thirteen tricks becomes sixteen points. Bid all thirteen and make it, and the bidding side enters twenty-six outright.

A missed bid under thirteen costs the bidding side the amount of the bid, and hands the other side the tricks it actually won. A missed bid of thirteen costs the bidding side sixteen, and the other side enters double the tricks it won. The sheet only takes whole numbers from zero up, so a cost like this can't go in as a minus: enter zero for your side on a deal your bid misses, and keep what you owe in your head (or on a scrap of paper by the sheet). The next time your side scores anything — on a bid of its own or as the defenders when the other side misses — enter those points minus whatever is still owed; if they don't cover the debt, enter zero and carry what's left, so your line never moves up until the debt is cleared.

A worked example

Three deals in, with East–West and North–South trading the bid back and forth:

Deal one — East–West bid 8, won 8

8

bid made, enter the tricks won

Deal two — North–South bid 10, won 7

0

bid missed by 3; enter 0 and carry the 10 owed

Deal two — East–West's own tricks

6

the defending side's tricks on a missed bid

Deal three — North–South bid 9, won all 13 (kaboot)

6

13 tricks plus the 3-point bonus, less the 10 still owed

After those three rows East–West's line reads 14 and North–South's reads 6, and North–South's missed bid from deal two is paid off in full. Nobody has had to write a negative number down anywhere.

Ending

Keep dealing until one side's line reaches 31 or more — or whatever higher line you agreed to play to before the first card was dealt. That side has won the match. End match is any player's tap once the line is crossed; there's no button to open the next one, because the next match deals itself in.

Bid what your hand can make

Count your sure winners before you open your mouth — the aces, the length in your longest suit, a king or queen backed up by enough small cards to protect it. A bid of eight needs eight tricks you can actually see coming, not eight tricks you're hoping your partner supplies. Overbidding by one is the single most expensive mistake in the game, because the penalty for missing is the whole bid, not the shortfall.

Count your trumps before anything else

The suit you call as trumps should be the one you're longest and strongest in — five trumps with the ace and king is worth bidding on its own, four to the ace much less so. A hand with no suit longer than four cards almost never supports a bid above seven or eight, whatever high cards it holds, because the defence will cash its winners before trumps can be drawn.

Listen to the bidding, not just your own hand

Every bid above the opening one tells you something about the hand that made it. A player who jumps straight to eleven over your seven is holding a monster, and your partner's pass after a high bid from the other side usually means a weak hand that's better kept quiet about. Use what the bidding says before you decide whether to raise again or let it go.

Lead trumps early when you've bid them

Having won the bid, draw the outstanding trumps before you touch anything else, unless you've a very good reason not to. A trump left out there is a trick the defence can still win later with nothing to show for it; drawn early, it's gone for good and your long suit runs free.

Defend by counting what's left

As a defender, keep track of how many tricks of your own you still need and how many trumps are out against your side. A bid that's one or two short of making is often beaten simply by holding back a trump to ruff the declarer's best card at the right moment, rather than following along from the first lead.

Egyptian Tarneeb

The popular Egyptian form folds the trump suit into the bid itself: you call a number and a suit together, the suits ranking no trumps, spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs from the top — seven clubs is the lowest call, thirteen no-trump the highest — and to overcall you must bid the same number in a higher suit, or more tricks in any suit. A player may also double when the last bid was an opponent's, which doubles what the bidding side wins or loses on the hand but not what the other side scores if it fails; passing or doubling doesn't stop you bidding later, and the bidding carries on past three passes in a row, ending only when a whole circuit goes by in which nobody bids — a double doesn't count as a bid. Scores still land on the sheet the same way — the bidding side's tricks, or the cost of the miss — just bigger where a double has been called, which your side has to work out before entering the number.

Playing clockwise

Some tables run the whole game clockwise instead — bidding opens with the player to the dealer's left, and the lead passes clockwise too. Nothing about the scoring changes; it's purely which way the cards and the talk go round the table.

Dealt in one go

Rather than one card at a time, some dealers hand out all thirteen cards to each player in a single batch. Faster, and it changes nothing about the bidding, the play or the scoring.

One bid each

In parts of Lebanon, every player gets exactly one turn to bid and no second chances — once the round of bidding is complete, whoever bid highest wins it, and nobody may raise their own number again. Under this rule the dealer, who speaks last, only has to match the highest bid already on the table to take it over, rather than beat it outright.

The dealer is pushed into bidding

Some tables force the dealer's hand: if the first three players all pass, the dealer must bid seven rather than throw the hand in. It keeps a weak-looking deal from being abandoned purely because nobody wanted to speak first.

How many cards do you deal in Tarneeb?

Thirteen each, dealt one at a time (or in a single batch, at some tables) from a full 52-card pack, so all four players hold their whole hand before the bidding starts.

What's the lowest bid you can make in Tarneeb?

Seven tricks. Bidding starts at seven and climbs from there, one trick at a time at least, up to the maximum possible bid of thirteen — all the tricks in the hand.

What happens if everybody passes on the first round?

The hand is thrown in. The same dealer gathers the cards, shuffles, and deals again rather than the deal moving on, because nobody committed to anything the first time round.

Can you play a hand of Tarneeb with no trumps?

Yes. Whoever wins the bidding may announce "no trumps" instead of naming a suit, and the hand is then played with the highest card of the suit led winning every trick, exactly as if it had no trump suit at all that round.

How many points do you need to win a game of Tarneeb?

Thirty-one by the usual rule, though many tables agree beforehand to play to 41, 51 or 61 for a longer game. Whichever line you pick, the first side to reach or pass it wins the match outright.

What does kaboot mean in Tarneeb?

Kaboot is winning every one of the thirteen tricks in a hand. Doing it on a bid under thirteen brings a 3-point bonus on top of the tricks you actually won; bidding thirteen outright and making it scores twenty-six points in one go.