How to Play Oh Hell!

Objective

Score more points than anyone else over a full trip up and down the river. Each deal you bid a number of tricks, and you score only if you take exactly that many. One trick too many costs you just as much as one too few. The game is won on the score sheet, not by grabbing tricks.

Setup

Cut for the first deal; the deal then passes to the left. In the first deal everyone gets one card, in the second two cards, and so on, one more each time, up to the largest hand that still leaves at least one card in the stock. Then the hand shrinks by one card per deal until you are back to a single card.

After each deal, put the rest of the deck face down and turn the top card face up. Its suit is trumps for that hand. Because the largest hand always leaves a card to turn, every deal has a trump suit.

A full game is long with three or four players. Many groups cap the top hand at 7 or 10 cards to keep the game near an hour. Pick the cap before the first deal and play the top hand once.

How to play

Look at your cards and the trump card. Starting with the player to the dealer’s left, each player bids once, from zero up to the number of cards in the hand. The scorekeeper writes each bid down and calls out the running total.

The dealer bids last, and this is the hook: the dealer may not make a bid that brings the total to exactly the number of tricks in the hand. With five cards dealt and bids of 2, 1 and 1 already in, the dealer can bid anything except 1. Since the total can never match, at least one player is going to miss.

The player to the dealer’s left leads first. Follow suit if you can. If you cannot, play a trump or discard anything. The highest trump wins the trick; if no trump was played, the highest card of the suit led wins. Aces are high. The winner leads the next trick, and so on until the hand is played out.

1. 1Check your hand and the turned-up trump
2. 2Bid once; the dealer bids last and cannot make the total fit
3. 3Follow suit if you can, otherwise trump or discard
4. 4Take your number exactly, then dodge every extra trick

Scoring

When the last trick of a deal is played, check each player’s tricks against their bid.

A made bid of 3 scores 13, and a made bid of 0 scores 10. Keep a running total for each player. After the final one-card deal, the highest total wins.

Variations

Down and up: start at the largest hand, work down to one card, then climb back up. The game is the same length; it just front-loads the hard hands.

Full deck at the top: some tables deal the whole deck on the biggest hand (13 each with four players) and play it with no trumps, since there is no card to turn.

No hook: let the bids add up to anything. The game is gentler, and on some deals everyone can make it.

Penalty scoring: a missed bid loses 1 point for each trick you were over or under, instead of scoring zero.

Blind one-card hand: in the one-card deals, players hold their card to their forehead without looking, so they can see everyone’s card but their own, and bid on that.

Tips from the table

If you are the dealer, you know the total before you bid. Use it. When the table has underbid, extra tricks will land somewhere, so lean high; when it has overbid, someone will be ducking, so lean low.

Bidding zero is safest with low cards spread across several suits. A void is dangerous when you are trying to duck, because it may force you to trump.

Small and middle trumps are the hardest cards to plan for. Count them as half a trick when you bid, then adjust as you see the play.

Late in the game, play against the leader as well as for your own bid. If the leader has already made their number, lead suits that may force an extra trick onto them.

Frequently asked