peer2peergames

Oh Hell

The dealer is forbidden to make the bids add up to the tricks available. So in every single hand, somebody misses. Say how many tricks you will take, take exactly that many, and watch the hands shrink from ten cards to one and grow back again.

Play Oh Hell Leaderboard

The deal and the trump

  1. Three or four hands from a standard pack. Two people sit at three hands with the bot taking the third.
  2. The hands change size every deal: ten cards each, then nine, down to a single card, and back up to ten again. That is nineteen hands and a hundred and nine tricks in a full match.
  3. After the deal one more card is turned face up. Its suit is trumps for that hand, and it beats any other suit played.
  4. Most of the pack is not dealt at all. At a four-hand deal of ten cards, forty cards are dealt, one is turned up and eleven are never seen by anybody.

Bidding, and the rule that binds the dealer

  1. Starting to the dealer's left and going round, every player says how many tricks they will take. You may bid none. Everybody bids, and everybody can hear what was bid before them.
  2. The dealer bids last, and may not bid the number that would make the bids add up to the number of tricks available. That number is greyed out on the dealer's pad, with the reason.
  3. So the hand is always over-bid or under-bid, and at least one player is always going to be wrong. That is the whole point of the game and it is why it has the name it has.
  4. Sometimes nothing is forbidden: if the other players have already bid more tricks than the hand holds, the dealer may bid anything. And on the one-card hands the rule often leaves the dealer exactly one number, which the page states rather than offering as a choice.

Playing a trick

  1. The player to the dealer's left leads the first trick, and may lead any suit, trumps included. After that the winner of each trick leads the next.
  2. Follow the suit led if you can. If you cannot, play anything, including a trump.
  3. The highest trump played takes the trick. If nobody played a trump, the highest card of the suit led takes it. So a two of trumps beats an ace of anything else.

Scoring

  1. You score one point for every trick you take, whether you bid it or not.
  2. If you took exactly the number you bid, you score ten more.
  3. So a made bid of none is worth ten, which is the best return in the game for the least risk, and a made bid of three is worth thirteen. Missing by one trick costs you the ten and nothing else: you keep the tricks you took.
  4. Nothing is ever deducted. A hand you got wrong is worth what you took and no less.

How a game ends

  1. The match is exactly nineteen hands long and ends when the last one is scored. There is no target score to reach and no early finish.
  2. The highest total wins. Equal highest totals share first place and there is no winner.
  3. A resignation or a missed deadline ends the game against that player: their seat finishes last and the others are placed by their totals. At a table with a bot in it the game is not rated.

Worth knowing before you start

  1. This is a long game. Nineteen hands is over five hundred moves at a four-hand table, so at a minute a move it is an evening rather than a coffee break. Pick a shorter limit if you want it finished today.
  2. Bidding none is a real bid, not a surrender. On a hand of rubbish it is the easiest ten points on the board, and the hard part is being made to take a trick you did not want.
  3. Count what is not there. Most of the pack is undealt on the short hands, so a suit nobody has led may simply not be in play, and an unsupported king is far safer at a four-card hand than at a ten-card one.
  4. Listen to the bidding. If the bids already add up to more than the hand holds, somebody is going to be disappointed and it does not have to be you; if they add up to less, a trick is going begging.
  5. Being last to bid is worth a lot, and being the dealer is worth less than it looks: you hear everything, and then you are forbidden the one number you might most want to say.

The deal and the turned-up card both come from the seed, which is published when the game ends, so every hand and every trump can be checked afterwards. Nobody ever sees another player's cards, and the cards that were not dealt are not seen by anybody at all.

Oh Hell terms

The hook
The rule that stops the dealer bidding the number that would make the bids add up to the tricks available. It is what guarantees that somebody misses every hand.
A trick
One card from each player. Whoever plays the highest trump takes it, or the highest card of the suit led if no trump was played.
The turn-up
The card turned face up after the deal. Its suit is trumps for that hand.
Trumps
The suit that beats all the others for one hand. Any trump beats any card of another suit, however low.

Playing it here

  • Against a person or the bot. The bot needs no account and starts at once. To play a person, be rated and keep your games, you need an account: an email address and a password.
  • At your own pace. Every move has a deadline you both see, from one minute to a week. A game can take an evening or it can take a fortnight.
  • Nothing to buy and nothing to win. No stakes, no prizes, no boosts, no undo. The only thing on offer is a place on a leaderboard, and only if you want one.
  • Every game can be checked. Anything decided by chance comes from the game's seed, and the seed is published the moment the game ends, so any finished game can be replayed and verified by anyone. See fair play.