 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(November 2024) |
Israeli Whist is a four player card game. [1] It is a variation of the classical Whist, that evolved among Israeli IDF soldiers in the nineteen eighties, and is still popular among soldiers and travelers. In Israel, it is simply known as "whist".
The cards are ranked by number and suit.
A round begins by dealing out all the cards (without jokers) to four players. [1] The dealer is switched every round in a clockwise direction, so that the player to the left of the current dealer is the next dealer. Each player receives 13 cards [1] that remain hidden from the other players.
In Israeli whist there are two rounds of bidding: a round to determine the trump suit and a round to determine the contract.
An interesting thing happens when all four players say "pass". In this situation, there is a "Frisch" round.
In a Frisch round, every player passes three cards to the player to his left. The cards are laid on the table facing down, and a player may pick up the cards given to him, only after he passed his three cards. After a Frisch round there is another bidding to determine the trump suit, only now the minimal bid is 6 instead of 5. There can be 3 Frisch rounds, and after each one, the minimal bid increases by one. If after three Frisch rounds there is still no bidding, the round is canceled and the cards are shuffled and dealt again.
The word "Frisch" originates from the German word for "fresh". This round is sometimes called "Goulash", which is borrowed from the informal bridge term Goulash deal.
After the trump suit is determined, there is another bidding round in which the "contracts" are determined – that is, the number of tricks a player declares he will take. The first to bid is the winner of the previous bidding (that determined the trump suit). In his bid, he says the number of tricks he will win; the number of tricks must be at least the number he declared in the previous bidding round. Next bids the player to his left, who can bid as many as s/he likes (between 0 and 13), and so do the other two in turn. The last player to bid is not allowed to make a bid that makes the sum of all four bids 13, because then all four players might be able to succeed in the round. So the last player to bid usually determines if the sum is more than 13 (an "over" game) or less than 13 (an "under": game). The meaning is that at least one player will not take enough tricks in an "over" game, or will take too many in an "under" game.
After all the cards are dealt and the trump and the contracts established, there are 13 game rounds, in which each player puts down a card and the player that puts down the strongest card takes the trick.
In the first game round, the first to put down a card is the winner of the first bid, next is the player to his left, and so on. In the subsequent rounds, the winner of the previous round plays first. The first player of the round is allowed to put down any of his cards and all the other players must follow suit (put down cards of the same suit). If a player doesn't have cards of the same suit, he may put down any other card that he has. If a player does have cards of the same suit, but puts down cards of another suit, and is later caught (he will have to put down all his cards eventually) he is fined 100 points. If a player doesn't have cards of the same suit, he may put down a card that is not of the trump suit, and then he surely loses the trick, or he may "cut" (put down a trump card).
After all four cards have been put down, the winner of the trick is determined, the highest card of the suit that started the round wins, unless trump cards are put down, and in that case, the strongest trump wins. The player to win the trick is the one to start the next round. When playing with no trump (NT), the rules are the same, only there is no option to cut, so a player that does not have the leading suit loses the trick for sure.
An example round (diamond is trump): player A leads with a 9♣, player B Q♣, Player C 7♦, player D 8♣. Notice that player C has no clubs, or else he would have to put down a club, so he has two options: to get rid of a card that is not trump, or to try to win the trick with a trump. Player D had clubs, so he had to put down a club and could not put down a trump, and so Player C wins the trick.
The object of the game is to win the exact number of tricks in the contract, no more and no fewer.
Contract bridge, or simply bridge, is a trick-taking card game using a standard 52-card deck. In its basic format, it is played by four players in two competing partnerships, with partners sitting opposite each other around a table. Millions of people play bridge worldwide in clubs, tournaments, online and with friends at home, making it one of the world's most popular card games, particularly among seniors. The World Bridge Federation (WBF) is the governing body for international competitive bridge, with numerous other bodies governing it at the regional level.
Oh hell or contract whist is a trick-taking card game of British origin in which the object is to take exactly the number of tricks bid. It was first described by B. C. Westall around 1930 and originally called oh! well. It was said to have been introduced into America via the New York clubs in 1931. Phillips and Westall describe it as "one of the best round games".
A trick-taking game is a card- or tile-based game in which play of a hand centers on a series of finite rounds or units of play, called tricks, which are each evaluated to determine a winner or taker of that trick. The object of such games then may be closely tied to the number of tricks taken, as in plain-trick games such as contract bridge, whist, and spades, or to the value of the cards contained in taken tricks, as in point-trick games such as pinochle, the tarot family, briscola, and most evasion games like hearts.
500 or Five Hundred is a trick-taking game developed in the United States from Euchre. Euchre was extended to a 10 card game with bidding and a Misère contract similar to Russian Preference, producing a cutthroat three-player game like Preference and a four-player game played in partnerships like Whist which is the most popular modern form, although with special packs it can be played by up to six players.
Skat, historically Scat, is a three-player trick-taking card game of the ace–ten family, devised around 1810 in Altenburg in the Duchy of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg. It is the national game of Germany and, along with Doppelkopf, it is the most popular card game in Germany and Silesia and one of the most popular in the rest of Poland. A variant of 19th-century Skat was once popular in the US. John McLeod considers it one of the best and most interesting card games for three players, and Kelbet described it as "the king of German card games." The German Skat Association assess that it is played by around 25 million Germans – more than play football.
Spades is a trick-taking card game devised in the United States in the 1930s. It can be played as either a partnership or solo/"cutthroat" game. The object is to take the number of tricks that were bid before play of the hand began. Spades is a descendant of the whist family of card games, which also includes bridge, hearts, and oh hell. Its major difference as compared to other whist variants is that, instead of trump being decided by the highest bidder or at random, the spade suit always trumps, hence the name.
Acol is the bridge bidding system that, according to The Official Encyclopedia of Bridge, is "standard in British tournament play and widely used in other parts of the world". It is a natural system using four-card majors and, most commonly, a weak no trump.
A game try in the card game of bridge is a bid that shows interest in bidding a game and asks partner to help in making the decision.
Belote is a 32-card, trick-taking, ace–ten game played primarily in France and certain European countries, namely Armenia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece, Luxembourg, Moldova, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and also in Saudi Arabia and Tunisia. It is one of the most popular card games in those countries, and the national card game of France, both casually and in gambling. It appeared around 1900 in France, and is a close relative of both Klaberjass and klaverjas. Closely related games are played throughout the world. Definitive rules of the game were first published in French in 1921.
Sheng ji is a family of point-based, trick-taking card games played in China and in Chinese immigrant communities. They have a dynamic trump, i.e., which cards are trump changes every round. As these games are played over a wide area with no standardization, rules vary widely from region to region.
Preferans or Russian Preference is a 10-card plain-trick game with bidding, played by three or four players with a 32-card Piquet deck. It is a sophisticated variant of the Austrian game Préférence, which in turn descends from Spanish Ombre and French Boston. It is renowned in the card game world for its many complicated rules and insistence on strategical approaches.
Zar Points (ZP) is a statistically derived method for evaluating contract bridge hands developed by Zar Petkov. The statistical research Petkov conducted in the areas of hand evaluation and bidding is useful to bridge players, regardless of their bidding or hand evaluation system. The research showed that the Milton Work point count method, even when adjusted for distribution, is not sufficiently accurate in evaluating all hands. As a result, players often make incorrect or sub-optimal bids. Zar Points are designed to take many additional factors into consideration by assigning points to each factor based on statistical weight. While most of these factors are already implicitly taken into account by experienced players, Zar Points provides a quantitative method that allows them to be incorporated into bidding.
Preempt is a bid in contract bridge whose primary objectives are (1) to thwart opponents' ability to bid to their best contract, with some safety, and (2) to fully describe one's hand to one's partner in a single bid. A preemptive bid is usually made by jumping, i.e. skipping one or more bidding levels. Since it deprives the opponents of the bidding space, it is expected that they will either find a wrong contract of their own, or fail to find any. A preemptive bid often has the aim of a save, where a partnership bids a contract knowing it cannot be made, but assumes that, the penalty will still be smaller than the value of opponents' bid and made contract.
These terms are used in contract bridge, using duplicate or rubber scoring. Some of them are also used in whist, bid whist, the obsolete game auction bridge, and other trick-taking games. This glossary supplements the Glossary of card game terms.
Pilotta (in Greek Πιλόττα) is a trick-taking 32-card game derived from Belote. It is played primarily in Cyprus, being very popular among the Cypriot population, especially the youngsters, who usually arrange “pilotta meetings” in places such as cafés and cafeterias. Its counterpart played in Greece is named Vida.
The Useful Space Principle, or USP, in the game of contract bridge was first articulated in a series of six articles in The Bridge World, published from November 1980 through April 1981. The USP is expressed succinctly in The Bridge World glossary as "a partnership's assigning meanings to actions so that the remaining bidding space matches the needs of the auction."
Five-card majors is a contract bridge bidding treatment common to many modern bidding systems. Its basic tenet is that an opening bid of one-of-a-major in first and second position guarantees at least five cards in that major. This method has become standard in North American tournament play, but European methods vary.
Maw, formerly also mawe, was a Scottish card game for two players, popularised by James I, which is ancestral to the Irish national game of Twenty-five as well as the Canadian game of Forty-fives. Maw appears to be the same as five cards, a game described by Charles Cotton in the 17th century. The game disappeared from the literature after the period of the English Commonwealth, only to emerge in Ireland in the 19th century in new forms for two or more players and known as five and ten, spoil five and forty-five. These new variants are still played today, the latter has evolved into the Canadian game of forty-fives.
Skærvindsel is a Danish card game for four players that is a member of the Schafkopf family. Today it is mostly played in Jutland and is therefore often spelled Sjervinsel, but was previously widespread throughout Denmark. It was the first Danish game where the winner of the auction, the declarer, could choose a partner by calling an Ace. This principle has since been transferred to Call-Ace Whist (Esmakkerwhist).
Sjavs is a Danish card game of the Schafkopf family that is played in two main variants. In Denmark, it is a 3-player game, played with a shortened pack of 20 cards; in the Faroe Islands, where it is very popular, it is a four-hand, partnership game using a standard piquet pack of 32 cards.