Oh Hell!♠

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Context and selected form

Oh Hell is documented in London and New York in the nineteen-thirties and now has many regional names. This guide fixes one complete profile: clockwise sequential bidding, the dealer hook, and points only for an exact result. Simultaneous finger bids and point-per-trick scoring are separate variants.

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Pack and hand schedule

Use 52 cards without jokers, ranked A K Q J 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2. Highest cut chooses first dealer; recut ties. Deal moves left each hand. With three to five players start at ten cards each; six start at eight; seven start at seven. Decrease by one to a single-card hand, then increase to the initial size, playing the minimum only once. Shuffle, cut and deal singly each time. Turn the next card for trumps; leave all other cards unused.

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Bids and hook

Starting left of dealer, each announces a number from zero to hand size, predicting exactly that many tricks; passing is forbidden. Record every bid. Dealer bids last and may not make the total bids equal the number of available tricks. A bid may change only before the next player has bid. Zero means an actual promise to take no tricks.

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Play

Dealer’s left leads any card, including trumps. Play clockwise and follow suit if possible. If void, play any card; trumping and overtrumping are optional. Highest trump wins, otherwise highest card of the suit led. Winner leads next; no drawing. Play all tricks and record each individual total.

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Score, finish and ties

An exact bid scores ten plus the bid, including ten for an exact zero. Missing by any amount scores zero; captured tricks alone do not score. Add each hand to cumulative totals. After the final scheduled hand, highest total wins. Our teaching-table tie agreement shares the win instead of adding unscheduled hands.

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Worked hook

There are four players and five cards each. The first bids are 1, 2, 0: sum 3. Dealer cannot bid 2 because 1+2+0+2=5. Dealer chooses 1, making total 4. Actual tricks 1, 3, 0, 1 sum 5. Scores are 11, 0, 10, 11; the player who took an unwanted extra trick gets zero.

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Common questions