Objective
Predict your own result, then make it happen. Winning more tricks than you bid is just as bad as winning fewer. The game is played over a series of deals with a different number of cards each time, and the player with the most points after the last deal wins.
Setup
Choose a first dealer; the deal passes to the left after every hand. In the first deal, each player gets one card. In the second deal, two cards. Keep adding one card per deal until the deck cannot go any higher. With four players that means 13 deals, ending with the whole deck dealt out.
After each deal, turn the next card of the deck face up. Its suit is trumps for that hand. If every card has been dealt and there is nothing left to turn, that hand is played with no trumps.
How to play
Starting with the player to the dealer’s left, each player bids once, saying exactly how many tricks they expect to win. Zero is a perfectly good bid. Write every bid down. The bids do not have to add up to the number of tricks available, and usually they do not, which means someone is going to miss.
The player to the dealer’s left leads to the first trick. You must follow suit if you can. If you cannot, you may play a trump or discard any card. The highest trump wins the trick, or the highest card of the suit led if no trump was played. The winner leads to the next trick.
- 1Look at your hand and the trump card
- 2Bid exactly how many tricks you will take
- 3Follow suit if you can; otherwise trump or discard
- 4Aim to take your number, not one trick more or less
Scoring
At the end of each deal, compare everyone’s bid with the tricks they actually took.
| Result | Score |
|---|---|
| Made your bid exactly | 10 plus the number you bid |
| Bid zero and took no tricks | 10 |
| Took more or fewer tricks than you bid | 0 |
Add each deal’s score to a running total. After the final deal, the player with the highest total wins.
Variations
The hook: many tables do not let the dealer, who bids last, make a bid that brings the total of all bids to exactly the number of tricks in the hand. That guarantees at least one player will miss.
Up and down the river: after reaching the largest hand, keep going back down one card at a time to a single card again. It doubles the length of the game.
Trick-by-trick scoring: score 1 point for every trick you take, plus a 10-point bonus only if you made your bid exactly.
Tips from the table
Small hands are harder than they look. With one or two cards, an ace in the trump suit is close to a sure trick, but almost anything else is a guess.
Pay attention to the running total of bids. If the table has underbid, extra tricks will be floating around and someone will be forced to take them.
Once you have made your bid, switch to defense. Throw your highest cards on tricks someone else is already winning, and keep low cards to duck with.
Video Guides Are on the Way
We’re filming Game Guides that walk through full hands at the table, from the deal to the score.
Frequently asked
Is Oh Pshaw the same as Oh Hell?
Yes. Oh Pshaw is the polite name for the same game. It is also known as Oh Well, Blackout and Up and Down the River.
Can I bid zero?
Yes, and making it scores 10. Ducking every trick can be harder than it sounds, especially in the bigger hands.
What if there is no card left to turn up for trumps?
Then that deal has no trump suit. Every trick is won by the highest card of the suit led.
Do the bids have to add up to the number of tricks?
No. In the standard game they can add up to anything. With the hook rule, the dealer is not allowed to make them add up exactly.
New rules every month
Get the next game before it hits the site.
