The Penguin Book of Card Games: Everything You Need to Know to Play Over 250 Games (35 page)

of hearts), or bid three by discarding the spades, leaving your

diamonds as winners. The bet er of these is zero, as the holders of

lower trumps wil almost certainly take too many tricks. Position is

also important. Given the lead, a bid of three is easily won by

leading diamonds and escaping with 7. Without it, hearts could be

drawn before you have a chance to trump in. The later you win

tricks, the harder it is to lose the lead.

With hearts as trump, and holding

J86 AQ9 AQ976 A

… the most sensible bid with or without the lead is two,

discarding Q 9 A. This loses two middling ranks and of ers one

certain and one probable trick withablack Ace. Should the SAfail,

you can probably expect to make the Jack by ruf ing a club lead. A

psychic bid, designed to confuse the others, would be to discard A

and two diamonds for a bid of three, hoping to make two spades

and the trump Jack, or else to bid two by throwing the Jack with

two diamonds. Either way, your problem is then two middling

spades. They could be lost to club leads, but early spade leads –

which may be expected from the holder(s) of Six and Seven –

would spel defeat.

The most remarkable feature of Ninety-Nine is that the suits have

distinctive strength characteristics in play. Because the average bid

is three, diamonds and spades are more frequently discarded in bids

than hearts and clubs, so that, in play, clubs and hearts tend to be

held long and spades and diamonds short. Therefore, clubs are a

more ‘reliable’ suit than diamonds. For example, a plain-suit

holding of AK76 wil normal y win two tricks with the lead,

whereas AK76 may be trumped on the first lead and almost

certainly wil be on the second. Conversely, if leading to the first

trick and wishing to avoid tricks, the Seven from AQ987 wil

almost certainly be overtaken, whereas the Seven from AQ987

could wel be fol owed by the Six and a discard.

Much the same applies to trumps. As we have seen, with

diamonds as trump the top three may wel be out of play for a bid

of zero, but with hearts or clubs as trump you wil nearly always

find al nine in play. Experienced players find that, as trumps, clubs

find al nine in play. Experienced players find that, as trumps, clubs

are reliable to the point of predictability in play, diamonds so

unreliable as to shipwreck skil on the rock of chance, hearts

somewhat treacherous because not quite as reliable as you might

expect, and spades usual y the most interesting and skil -

demanding. No-trump games tend to favour the opening leader.

Declarations are made on hands containing not more than one

uncertain card, and usual y for not more than four tricks.

Revelations require exceptional hands containing consecutive high

trumps, or Sixes and low cards in al suits. They are best played on

bids of one or two tricks when you have the opening lead, or of

zero when you don’t. The opponents of a declared or revealed bid

must play co-operatively in order to beat it, as they wil score more

by failing themselves and defeating the contract than vice versa.

Final y: A long plain suit based on a Six plays safer as a run of

definite losers. For example, AK876 counts bet er as no tricks than

as one or two with the top cards, which could wel be trumped.

From a sequence always play the least informative card – the Eight

rather than the Six in the above heart holding.

The Golden Rule of three-hand Ninety-Nine remains: if in doubt,

bid three.

Don’t forget…

Play to the left (clockwise) unless otherwise stated.

Eldest or Forehand means the player to the left of the dealer

in left-handed games, to the right in right-handed games.

T = Ten, p = players, pp = in fixed partnerships, c = cards,

✝ = trump,

= Joker.

3 Euchre family

The fol owing are mostly (but not entirely) gambling and drinking

games in which not al the cards are dealt out, which makes it