Variants and house rules

The additions groups pick up over the years, what each one does to the game, and which ones we would actually play.

The base rules are on the rules page; this page is only what goes on top of them. Each one comes with what it does to the game and whether we would play it ourselves. Agree them before round 1, not during round 9 — that is the only house rule that really matters.

The hook (screw the dealer)

The dealer bids last and may not bid the number that would make the bids add up exactly to the number of tricks. Every round is then guaranteed at least one loser.

Our take: good once the table knows each other and the rounds are getting too comfortable. It makes the game meaner for newcomers — not in somebody's first game.

We used to say here that it "punishes the dealer's seat hard", which is what everybody says. Then we measured it, and it is not true: dealing is worth 5.56 points a round before the hook, because the dealer bids last, and the hook only takes 2.79 of that back. The full numbers — including the 21% of deals where the rule actually bites, and the seat that quietly pays for it — are on what screw the dealer actually costs.

Blind round one

In round one nobody looks at their single card — everyone holds it to their forehead, so you see every hand but your own, and bid from that. Our take: a good joke that lasts exactly one round, and a gentle way in for a table with a first-timer at it.

Shorter and longer games

A full four-player game is 15 rounds and about an hour. Cut it at round 10 if you are short of time. Some groups play up and down the river: up to the biggest round and back down to one, which is longer overall but softens the ending, because the huge unwieldy rounds only happen once. Our take: cutting it short is the honest option; half a game feels like half a game either way.

Special-card variants

• Last Magician wins instead of the first. Inverts the tactics and kills leading a Magician entirely. Our take: no — it removes a tool and returns nothing.
• No special cards at all. That is plain Oh Hell on a 52-card pack, and it is a perfectly good game: shorter, more about counting, less about surprises.

Scoring variants

Covered on the scoring page — the main one is paying a successful zero by round number rather than a flat 20.

Two players

It does not really work with two, and we have written honestly about why, along with a dummy-hand variant that is the least broken way to try: playing with two. The better answer, if a screen is allowed at the table, is to deal a third player from the computer and play the real game instead of a patched-up version of it.

Wizard house rules

The 60-card edition sold in Germany as Wizard by Amigo Spiele — a registered trademark of theirs, not ours — lists several variants in its own rulebook, and German playing groups have added plenty more. Our German pages cover them at Varianten und Hausregeln.