Tysiacha

Players and equipment

You and two others play with a 24-card pack: Ace, Ten, King, Queen, Jack and Nine in each suit, and nothing else. Tysiacha is a point-trick game — the cards you win in tricks are worth points, and holding both the King and Queen of a suit is worth even more if you get the chance to declare it.

Ace

11

highest card in the suit

Ten

10

ranks above the King

King

4

-

Queen

3

-

Jack

2

-

Nine

0

lowest card, worth nothing

King and Queen of hearts

100

the richest marriage

King and Queen of diamonds

80

-

King and Queen of clubs

60

-

King and Queen of spades

40

the cheapest marriage

All the card points in the pack add up to 120, so you may only bid over 120 if you hold at least one King-Queen pair to declare.

The deal

Deal passes to your left after every hand. You deal one card at a time, clockwise, until everyone has seven cards, putting one card face down on the table in each of the first three rounds: those three cards are the talon. Whoever wins the bidding takes the talon, adds it to their hand, and passes one unwanted card to each opponent before play begins.

Play

The player to the dealer's left opens the bidding at 100 or more, in steps of 5. Bidding goes round the table until two players have passed; the last one standing is the declarer for the hand. The declarer turns the talon face up for everyone to see, adds it to their hand, passes one unwanted card face down to each opponent so everyone holds eight, and may then raise the bid to any higher multiple of 5.

The declarer leads to the first trick, and whoever wins a trick leads the next. Follow suit if you can. There is no fixed trump suit — instead, if you win a trick while holding the King and Queen of one suit, you may lead one of them straight away and declare the pair: that suit becomes trumps from that moment, until somebody else declares a different marriage. You can only declare on a trick you have just won, and only while you still hold both cards of the pair in your hand. Once a trump suit is set, anyone who can't follow suit must play a trump if they have one.

If, once the talon has been passed out, any player holds all four nines, they may show their hand and call the deal off: the cards are reshuffled and the same dealer deals again, with nobody scoring anything for that hand.

Scoring

Add up the card points in the tricks you won, plus any marriage you declared. The declarer's own total decides the hand: make the bid or better it, and the whole bid is added to the declarer's running score; fall short, and the bid is subtracted instead. Whichever way the bid goes, each defender adds their own card points plus any marriage they declared, rounded to the nearest 5.

SquareScores deals nothing and never sees a card — it only keeps the running total. On the sheet, enter the points a hand added to your score, hand by hand — the running total across hands is what races to 1000. A hand that takes points away from you (a missed bid, or one of the penalties below) can't be entered as a minus here: enter 0 for that hand, then take the loss off your next entries, a hand at a time, until it is used up. A big penalty is worth keeping your own note of, since the sheet cannot show it mid-hand — whether it should is a question for a person.

A worked hand

The declarer bid 130, then raised it to 160 after looking at the talon, and took 215 points — 55 card points in tricks, plus 160 for declaring the hearts and clubs marriages — enough to make the raised bid, so the full 160 is added to the declarer's score. One defender took 42 card points, rounding down to 40; the other took 23, rounding up to 25.

Declarer, before the hand

420

running score

Declarer makes the bid

+160

add the bid

Defender A, before the hand

650

running score

Defender A takes 42 points

+40

rounds to 40

Defender B, before the hand

300

running score

Defender B takes 23 points

+25

rounds to 25

The barrel

A running score can never sit between 880 and 1000. Whenever a hand would take you from below 880 into that stretch, your score stops at 880 instead (tables call this "the barrel"), and you can stay there for at most three hands in a row. Be the declarer on one of them and take at least 120 points, and you win outright. Be the declarer and miss your bid, and the bid comes off your 880 as usual and you are off the barrel. As a defender, any points you take don't count at all. If the third hand passes without a win, you fall off the barrel to 760.

Falling short three times

As a defender, a hand in which you take no card points is a zero, even if you won a trick of three Nines. A single trick of a Jack and two Nines scores 2, which rounds to nothing, but it is not a zero. Hands you play on the barrel never count as zeros. Your third zero, and every third one after it, costs you 120 points. A declarer who can see a bad hand coming may call it off instead of playing on: this is a Rospisat', the hand stops there, each opponent scores 60, and your own score is untouched the first two times — the third Rospisat' costs you 120, exactly like a third zero. You can't declare a Rospisat' while you are on the barrel.

Ending

A hand ends the game the moment somebody's running score reaches or passes 1000, or a player on the barrel makes their 120 — either way, that's the win. Any player at the table can bank the match once that has happened; nobody needs to wait on the dealer. A match that stops short of 1000 closes the same way every unfinished match does on this sheet, by any member ending it.

Count your marriages before you bid

A bid over 120 only pays off if you hold at least one King-Queen pair, since the whole pack only carries 120 card points. Know what you can declare before you open your mouth, not after you've already bid past it.

Guard your nines

Passing a card to an opponent who might already be close to holding all four nines can hand them a free redeal and erase a strong hand you were counting on. Keep a rough count of the nines you've seen before deciding what to pass away.

Watch who's on the barrel

A player stuck at 880 plays differently: their points as a defender count for nothing, so expect an aggressive bid from them on almost any hand. A wild bid from the barrel doesn't mean a strong hand — it means they have only three hands to get the 120 and win, and defending gets them nothing.

Time your marriage, don't rush it

Declaring a King-Queen pair means leading the King or Queen, and that card can lose to the Ace or Ten of the suit you've just made trumps. Declare at the wrong moment and you can cost yourself the very trick you were trying to win. A marriage you never declare scores nothing, though, so don't sit on it forever — wait for a trick you're confident of winning with the lead, then declare.

Four at the table

A fourth player can join by sitting out one hand in rotation, dealt no cards at all. Some tables give the sitter-out points for an ace left in the talon, or for a marriage found there; others don't bother. It differs table to table, so agree it before you deal.

A doubled opening set

Some tables start a session with a gold set: three hands, one dealt by each player, in which the opening bid must be at least 120 and every score, win or loss, is doubled. If nobody makes their bid in the set, another gold set is played.

Bidding blind

A player may choose to bid without looking at their own hand. If a blind bid wins the bidding, the whole hand is scored double once it's played out. You can stop bidding blind and look at your cards at any point, after which you're no longer blind and the doubling doesn't apply.

Polish Tysiąc

The Polish form bids in multiples of 10 rather than 5, and rounds a defender's points to the nearest 10 instead of 5. It also swaps the barrel for being "locked" between 900 and 1000: a locked player scores only as the declarer, until a lost bid drops them back under 900 and frees them again.

How many cards does each player get in Tysiacha?

Seven each at the start of a hand, with three more dealt face down into the talon. The declarer adds the talon to their hand, then passes two cards away, one to each opponent, so all three players play the hand with eight cards.

What happens if a player holds all four nines?

Once the declarer has passed out the talon cards, a player holding all four nines can show them and call the hand off. The same dealer reshuffles and deals again, and nobody scores anything for the hand that was abandoned.

Can the trump suit change more than once in a hand?

Yes. Every time a player wins a trick while holding a King and Queen of a suit, they can declare it and make that suit trumps — and it can happen several times over the course of one hand, suit after suit.

What is the barrel in Tysiacha?

It's the stretch between 880 and 1000 that a running score can never sit inside. A hand that would put you there leaves you at 880, on the barrel, for at most three hands in a row: take 120 or more as declarer on one of them and you win outright, miss a bid as declarer and it comes off as usual, and get through all three without winning and you drop to 760.

Can you play Tysiacha with two players?

There are two-player forms of the game, dealt and bid differently from the three-player table this brief covers, with the deck split between you rather than shared three ways.

What's the difference between Tysiacha and 1001?

1001 is a related, simpler game played in Germany with a smaller pack and no nines, where the target is just over 1000 instead of to 1000 — close enough to confuse, different enough to be its own game.