How to play Five Hundred

Five Hundred is the national card game of Australia and a long-time favourite in New Zealand and parts of North America. It takes the bowers of Euchre, adds a joker as the highest trump and a three-card kitty, and puts an auction on top: you and your partner bid how many of the ten tricks you will take and which suit will be trumps, or bid misère and try to lose every trick on your own. Each contract has a price from a fixed table, so judging your hand, competing in the auction and counting the cards decide who reaches 500 first.

How to play on skill.games

When you open the game, the settings appear. Choose a difficulty (Easy, Normal, Hard or Crazy) and press PLAY.

• The table: you sit at the bottom and your partner Mia sits across from you. Liam on your left and Ruby on your right are the other team. A "D" marks the dealer. At the top, the status line says whose turn it is; one chip shows the match score, and the other shows the auction, then the contract, who holds it and the tricks each team has taken.
• Bidding: the kitty lies face down in the middle. On your turn a panel opens above your hand. Pick a suit or NT (no trumps) on the top row, set the number of tricks with minus and plus (the bid's value is shown beside it) and press BID, or press PASS. MISÈRE and OPEN MISÈRE appear when they are allowed. Each player's bid shows in a bubble by their name.
• The kitty: if you win the auction, the three kitty cards join your hand. Tap three cards to discard (tap again to change your mind) and press DISCARD.
• Playing: tap a card or drag it onto the table. Playable cards are lifted and glow; a card that isn't allowed shakes and the status line explains why. If you lead the joker in no trumps or misère, the panel asks which suit the others must follow.

After each hand a sheet shows the contract, the tricks each team took, the contract points, the points for tricks taken in defence and the match score; press NEXT HAND to continue. You can drag cards within your hand to rearrange them. The menu button in the top-left corner pauses, starts a new match or turns the sound off. The match is saved as you play, so you can press CONTINUE later. At the end, the results screen shows the score, the contracts each team made and your statistics.

Rules

The cards. Five Hundred uses 43 cards: in hearts and diamonds the ace down to the four, in spades and clubs the ace down to the five, and one joker. Four players play in two teams, partners sitting opposite each other.

The deal. The first dealer is chosen at random, and the deal passes to the left. Each player gets ten cards, dealt three, four and three, with one card to the kitty after each round, so the kitty holds three cards.

The auction. Starting on the dealer's left and going round as many times as needed, each player bids or passes. A bid is a number of tricks from six to ten with a trump suit or no trumps, such as "seven hearts". Each bid must be worth more than the one before it. A player who passes is out of the auction for that hand. When three players have passed after a bid, the last bid is the contract. If all four pass, the cards are thrown in and the next player deals.

Bid values. The suits rank spades, clubs, diamonds, hearts, then no trumps. A bid of six is worth 40 in spades, 60 in clubs, 80 in diamonds, 100 in hearts and 120 in no trumps, and each extra trick adds 100: seven spades is 140, eight no trumps 320, ten no trumps 520.

Misère. A misère bid promises that you will lose every trick, playing alone without trumps. It is worth 250, ranks between the sevens and the eights, and may only be bid over a bid of seven. Open misère is the same, but your cards are laid face up after the first trick; it is worth 500, ranks between ten diamonds and ten hearts, and may be bid at any time.

The kitty. The winner of the auction, the contractor, takes the three kitty cards and discards any three cards face down.

Trumps. The joker is the highest trump. Next come the jack of trumps, the right bower, and the jack of the other suit of the same colour, the left bower, which counts as a trump. Then the ace, king, queen, ten and so on down. In the other suits the order is ace, king, queen, jack, ten and down.

The joker in no trumps and misère. The joker belongs to no suit and wins any trick it is played to. You may play it only when you can't follow the suit led. If you lead it, you name a suit that hasn't been led yet, and the others must follow that suit; once all four suits have been led, the joker can't be led except to the last trick. In misère, a player who can't follow suit and holds the joker must play it.

The play. The contractor leads the first trick. You must follow the suit that was led if you can; if you can't, you may play any card. The highest trump wins the trick; if there is no trump, the highest card of the suit led wins. The winner leads to the next trick. In misère the contractor's partner lays their cards down and sits the hand out.

Scoring. If the contractor's team takes at least the number of tricks bid, it scores the value of the bid; extra tricks earn nothing, except that all ten tricks on a bid worth less than 250 score 250. If it falls short, it loses the value of the bid. The other team always scores 10 points for each trick it takes. Misère and open misère score 250 or 500 when the contractor takes no tricks, and lose that much otherwise; the other team scores nothing.

Winning. A team wins when it reaches 500 points by making its own contract. Points for tricks taken in defence never win the game on their own: play goes on until a team gets there with a contract. A team that falls to -500 or lower loses.

Strategy tips

• Count trumps first. The joker, both bowers and the ace of trumps are nearly sure tricks. Five trumps with two of them is a good start for a bid of six or seven.
• Count on your partner, a little. Your partner and the kitty usually add two or three tricks. A hand that needs more than that is a gamble.
• Use your partner's bid. If your partner has bid a suit and you hold good cards in it, support that suit rather than naming your own.
• Discard to make voids. From the kitty, throw away low cards in short side suits so you can trump them later. Keep aces and trumps.
• Lead trumps as contractor. Drawing the opponents' trumps protects your side's aces and long suits.
• Remember the joker. Until it has been played, no trump of yours is safe. In no trumps it will beat any card when its holder runs out of the suit led.
• Bid misère with low cards. A hand of small cards with no lonely high cards, and no joker, is a misère. Against one, lead low cards and keep your own lowest cards to play under the contractor.
• Watch the score. A team near 500 can only win with its own contract, so near the end the auction becomes a fight for the right to play.

Difficulty levels

Your partner always plays at least at Hard, and at Crazy it plays Crazy. The difficulty you choose sets how well your opponents play:

• Easy: bids by a rough count of its cards and often overbids, never bids misère, and often plays a careless card.
• Normal: bids by counting its trumps, aces, kings and voids together with what its partner bid, bids misère with a hand of low cards, and plays solid cards, but it doesn't remember what has been played.
• Hard: plays every suit, no trumps and misère out in many imagined deals, kitty included, and bids what is worth most; it remembers every card and, before each card, plays out possible deals that fit what the others have shown.
• Crazy: the strongest: far more imagined deals, and it reads the auction, imagining only deals in which each player holds the cards for what they bid.

Statistics are kept for each difficulty.