All Fours: Yorkshire♠

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Four players and a full pack

Fixed partners sit opposite. Use 52 cards without jokers, ranked A K Q J 10 down to 2 in every suit. Deal and play clockwise. Paper can replace the traditional pegging board: the important thing is recording points rather than simply counting tricks.

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First pitch and the waiting partner

To choose the first pitcher, shuffle, offer the right-hand player a cut, and deal face up clockwise from the left until a jack appears. Its recipient pitches first; the player to that person’s right deals. Gather and reshuffle for the real hand.

Dealer offers the right-hand opponent a cut, then deals six each in three rounds, for example two per round. Leave the remainder face down: there is no trump indicator or kitty. The next deal passes left.

The player left of dealer, the pitcher, leads first. The pitcher’s partner must not look at their hand until that lead; breaking this restriction awards opponents four points. The opening card’s suit becomes trump for the whole hand.

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Six tricks

Follow a trump lead with trump if able. On a non-trump lead, either follow suit or trump, even when holding the led suit. If void, play anything. Overtaking is not required. Highest trump wins, otherwise highest card of the led suit; the winner leads next.

Store the first trick face up with a trump on top as a reminder. Stack later tricks face down by partnership. There is no drawing. A player with no trumps and no valuable cards—nothing above nine—may throw the remaining hand face up into the current trick if not winning it. That player takes no further part, leaving the partner to continue.

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Four ordered scoring categories

• High: one to the partnership originally dealt the highest trump in play.
• Low: one to the original holders of the lowest trump in play, whoever captures it.
• Jack: one for capturing the trump jack. An undealt jack supplies no point.
• Game: one for the greater captured card-value total: in every suit A=4, K=3, Q=2, J=1, 10=10; 2–9 zero. Equal totals give neither side Game.

Start at zero and play to eleven. Award categories strictly High, Low, Jack, Game. The first partnership reaching the target wins. At ten apiece, High settles the match even if opponents would earn every later category.

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A point need not follow its captured card

You pitch A♥, establishing hearts as trump. Partner holds 2♥, which opponents capture later. Your side still receives High and Low. If the trump jack was undealt, nobody scores Jack. Winning a majority of valueless tricks is not itself a scoring achievement.

← On a small screen, scroll the diagram horizontally. →

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Regional context and variations

This account comes from play at the Black Labrador pub in Batley, rather than a claimed uniform rule for every English club. Nearby communities may prohibit trumping while holding suit. Heckmondwike league matches include a team format to fifteen, excluded here. Yorkshire play belongs to the older English All Fours family; the date of the field account is not the game’s invention date.

Common questions