Score sheet

Keep score for Oh Hell and every other call-your-tricks card game — 3 to 6 players, no sign-up, and none of the arithmetic. It works on a phone at the table and prints onto a single sheet if you would rather use a pen.

How the scoring works

Before each round every player calls how many tricks they think they will take. Then you play the round out and compare.

• Called it exactly — 20 points, plus 10 for every trick you called. Calling 3 and taking 3 is 50. Calling 0 and taking 0 is 20.
• Missed — minus 10 for every trick you were out by, in either direction. Calling 2 and taking 4 is −20, and so is calling 4 and taking 2.

The pad above does that arithmetic with the same function the Pythia game engine uses to score a live table, so the two can never disagree with each other.

How many rounds do you play?

The deck is 60 cards, and every card is dealt every round, 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. Round 1 deals one card each, round 2 deals two, and so on up to the last round, which uses the whole deck.

Set the player count above and the pad lays out exactly that many rows.

Printing it

Hit Print and the page drops the navigation, the explanations and this text, and prints the pad alone — names, rounds, and empty boxes to fill in by hand if you would rather keep score on paper. Print it before you fill anything in and you have a blank score sheet; print it afterwards and you have the record of the night.

Want the rules on paper as well? The rules fit on one sheet too — the same text as the rules pages, with the navigation and the asides taken off. Print both and whoever is teaching the game has everything they need in two pages.

Other names for this game

The bid-your-tricks family is old and has collected a lot of names. If you learned it as Oh Hell, Nomination Whist, Blackout, Up and Down the River, Contract Whist, Judgement, Oh Pshaw or Kachuful, the scoring above is the one you are looking for — the 20-plus-10 scoring is the most widely played variant, and it is what this pad uses.