Rules to print
The whole game on one sheet, with the navigation and the asides stripped out — to take to the table.
The short version: everyone gets the same number of cards, everyone calls how many tricks they think they will take, then you play the hand out. Call it exactly right and you score. Miss by one in either direction and you lose points. That is the whole game, and it is why it is a much better game than it sounds.
The deck and the players
60 cards: a standard 52-card pack, plus four Magicians and four Jesters. Three to six players. If you are playing plain Oh Hell with a 52-card pack, drop the eight special cards and everything else below still holds.
How many rounds
Round 1 deals one card each, round 2 deals two, and so on until the deck runs out — so the number of rounds is 60 divided by the number of players: 3 players play 20 rounds, 4 play 15, 5 play 12, 6 play 10. With a 52-card pack, deal until you run out of cards the same way.
Trump
After the deal, turn the top card of the remaining stock face up. Its suit is trump for the round. If it is a Magician, the dealer chooses the trump suit — before making their own bid. If it is a Jester, there is no trump. In the final round every card has been dealt, so there is nothing to turn and no trump. The edge cases, and when trump actually wins, are on the trump page.
Bidding
Starting to the dealer's left, each player says how many tricks they will win. Bids are spoken aloud, written down, and binding. The bids do not have to add up to the number of tricks — the table may collectively bid more or fewer. That is the engine of the game: either there is not enough to go round, or there are tricks nobody wants and somebody has to take them.
Many groups play the hook rule, where the dealer — who bids last — may not bid the number that would make the bids add up exactly. It guarantees at least one loser every round. It is a house rule, not the base rule. Full detail, and how to count a bid rather than guess it, on the bidding page.
Playing the tricks
The player to the dealer's left leads. Follow the led suit if you can; if you cannot, play anything, including trump. Magicians and Jesters may always be played, whether or not you could follow.
The trick goes to, in order:
- the first Magician played;
- otherwise the highest trump;
- otherwise the highest card of the led suit;
- if the trick was all Jesters, the first Jester played.
Lead a Magician and there is no led suit at all — everyone else may play anything, and loses anyway. Lead a Jester and the suit is set by the next card played that is not a Jester. Aces are high. The winner of a trick leads to the next one. Every edge case the eight special cards create is on the Magicians and Jesters page.
Scoring
- Bid exactly right — 20 points, plus 10 for every trick you bid. Bidding 3 and taking 3 is 50. Bidding 0 and taking 0 is 20, not nothing.
- Missed — minus 10 for every trick you were out by, over or under. Bidding 2 and taking 4 is −20, and so is bidding 4 and taking 2.
There is no bonus for winning tricks you did not bid for. Worked examples on the scoring page, and if you would rather not do the arithmetic at all, the free score sheet does it for you and prints onto one page.