How to play Tarneeb

The rules exactly as High Card Club plays them.

Tarneeb is a partnership game from the Levant, played by four. You and the player opposite you are a team and share one score. The word tarneeb means trump, and that is the heart of it: one team promises a number of tricks and names the trump suit. A trick is one round of four cards; the best card wins it.

The deal

A full 52-card deck, ace high, 13 cards each, 13 tricks in a hand. The deal moves one seat to the left after every hand, and the player to the dealer's left speaks first.

The bidding

Starting to the dealer's left, each player in turn bids or passes. The lowest bid is 7 - more than half the tricks - and the highest is 13. Every new bid has to be higher than the one before it, and a pass is final: once you pass you will not be asked again. The bidding ends when everyone else has passed, or the moment somebody bids 13.

The bid is for your team, not for you alone: your partner's tricks count towards it. If all four players pass, nobody is left holding a contract, so the hand is thrown in and the next dealer deals the same hand number again.

Choosing the trump

The player who won the bidding names one of the four suits as trump. There is no no-trump contract. That same player leads the first trick.

Playing a trick

The lead card sets the suit. Going clockwise, everyone adds one card, and the winner leads the next trick. The highest trump wins; with no trump on the trick, the highest card of the led suit wins. Tarneeb is gentle about duties:

• Follow the suit that was led if you hold it. This is the only card you are ever forced to play.
• There is no duty to beat the winning card, and no duty to trump when you are void. Out of the led suit, play anything, trump or not.
• Trump may be led at any time, from the very first trick, unless the table switched that off (see house rules).

Tap a card the table will not take and it tells you why: you hold the suit that was led, or trumps are not broken yet at a table that plays that way.

Scoring a hand

Only the bidding team's promise matters, and the hand is scored when the thirteenth trick is collected.

• If the bidding team takes at least its bid, it scores one point for every trick it took, not just for the tricks it bid. Bid 8 and take 10: 10 points. The other team scores nothing, however many tricks it managed to win.
• If the bidding team falls short, it loses its bid: a failed 9 is -9. The other team scores one point per trick it took.
• A bid of 13 made in full is worth 26 instead of 13: the whole hand, doubled. A failed 13 is -13.

How the match ends

The table owner chooses before the first deal. Either the match runs to a target score - 31, 41 or 61 points, with 31 as the default - or it runs a fixed number of hands: 5, 9 or 11, five by default. A hand is always finished, and if both teams are level when the match should end, another hand is played until one is ahead. A safety cap stops any match after 99 hands.

House rules

Tarneeb has two switches, set by whoever opens the table:

• Leading trump: anytime (the default), as Levant tables usually play. Set to only once broken, a trump may not be led until a trump has been played on some trick, unless trumps are all you hold - the Batak habit, which plenty of tables prefer.
• Opening bid: 7 (the default) or 5 on more relaxed tables, which makes a contract much easier to buy. The maximum stays 13 either way.

At the table

Your seat has a clock that runs around your avatar. At relaxed tempo you get 60 seconds per card and 75 to bid, at normal 30 and 40, at fast 15 and 25. Run out of time and the table plays a legal move for you; do that three turns in a row and it keeps playing your seat until you press Take over or play a card yourself. A lost connection holds your seat 60 seconds, or 10 if Discord tells us you closed the game. Leaving a match on purpose gives your seat to a bot for good, and your partner is stuck with it.

The other games

Back to how to play, or read the rules for Batak, Spades and Baloot.