This guide is intended to augment what you may already know of 500 from
a typical card games book or web-site.
As you have read, 500 is a
Whist-based
game, as is
Contract Bridge.
500 shares features with both
cousins, but the key difference is that after you master the
technicalities, success in 500 comes from taking chances.
I assume that you have a basic grasp of bowers, Trumps, No-trumps,
Misère, tricks, kitty and bidding. Here I explain the basics
of playing 500 in teams. Teams in four and six handed last for
the duration of the game, and are known during bidding. Teams in
5 handed are formed during each hand, after bidding is finished.
Four handed is the most common form of serious 500, so that is the
focus of the discussion.
There is often a discussion of the rules at the start of a match.
Some schools have local rules, but the common thread is that they are
usually based on "Queen's Slipper" rules. Common variants are to
outlaw Misère, to alter the scoring of Misère, or to redefine the rules
regarding play of the Joker in No-trumps and Misère (is the Joker
highest or best). My view is that outlawing Misère reduces the
skill level required. Some people like to score points for tricks
taken against the contact, even if it is made. The method used to
detirmine teams in 5 handed can also vary. One unusual variation
is to allow the winning bidder to make an extra bid; this change has
far reaching effects on the bidding, and is not recommended here.
Four handed requires 43 cards, so the lowest cards are black 5's and
red 4's. Take the time to count how many cards are in each suit when
playing no-trumps, when that suit is trumps, or when the other suit
of the same color is trumps. During play you must keep count of (at
least) how many cards have been played and which card is the highest in
each suit. You must also keep track of who holds which suits and who
has none. If possible, identify who has control of each suit.
Most schools ban riffle shuffles, they require overhand shuffling.
This usually give better hands and is usually considered to be harder
to rig. The deal is in three rounds: 3 to each player, then 4 to each,
then 3 to each, with two variations on how to deal the kitty. Some
people prefer to put 3 into the kitty after the first round, others
prefer to deal one into kitty after each round. The latter has the
danger that the bottom card of the desk might be seen (or even shown)
during the deal.
This is what differentiates serious four handed 500 from the three
handed parlour game. There are various bidding schemes and
variations; I describe the main one here (without claiming to be an
expert) after briefly mentioning the simplistic bidding method.
Here are the standard contract values:
| Tricks | ♠ | ♣ | ♦ | ♥ | No Trumps |
|---|
| 6 | 40 | 60 | 80 | 100 | 120 |
| 7 | 140 | 160 | 180 | 200 | 220 |
| 8 | 240 | 260 | 280 | 300 | 320 |
| 9 | 340 | 360 | 380 | 400 | 420 |
| 10 | 440 | 460 | 480 | 500 | 520 |
Misère: 250 Open Misère: 500
Simple bidding: each player bids a suit or No-trumps to the number of
tricks they think they can win if that bid wins. This bidding
transfers little information to partners, and does not facilitate high
bids, since each bid has to be for a viable contract. This is the
bidding used in the three handed parlour game.
The remainder of this section is on serious bidding.
To win, the partnership must win the highest number of tricks possible
in each hand, whether the partnership has the contract or not.
In order to achieve this the partners must have a good idea of what
cards the other holds, so that each card can be played at the best
time.
You cannot bid again after you pass. The lowest bid in 500 is 6,
and a bid of 10 is for all 10 tricks. Together these facts mean
that there is no margin for error. And to complicate things, your
position relative to the dealer can have an effect on all bids.
If you are first to bid and your only viable bid is 6 Hearts, then
another player who wanted to bid Diamonds as an off-suit will now
find bidding Diamonds difficult.
In 500, bids rarely have a single possible interpretation, and this along
with the unknown contents of the kitty means that there is always an
element of a gamble in 500. This is a key ingredient of the game.
The first 'rule' of bidding is that you must always make a first bid.
Sometimes you hand will be so poor that you cannot bid, but that will
be rare. The second 'rule' of bidding that you must never leave
your partner with a first bid. Like all rules, there will be
times when your nerves fail you or common sense tells you to pass.
With these rules and strong players the winning contract is seldom less
than eight.
We want to give our partner information that will help the partnership
to win the maximum number of tricks. Someone will make a winning
bid but they rarely control every trick in the hand. There comes
a time when your partner needs to know what suits you can take a trick
in. This is the time to bid (six of) that suit. For example
if you want to bid lots of Hearts but have the Ace of Clubs you would
bid six Clubs. Even if you had no other bid in mind.
Sometimes you have no Ace, but you should still bid your strongest suit
to give your partner some idea of what is in your hand. This
would usually be your longest suit where you hold the King. If
you have more than one option for your first bid you would make the
lowest and least ambiguous bid you can.
A key piece of information is the location of the Joker. It is
common to bid six No-trumps if you hold the Joker. This bid
could also be a cover for an intention to bid Misère (it forces the
bidding to seven, when a Misère bid is legal), or it could mean that
you hold control of several suits. Strangely enough, since Misère
is No-trumps being played to lose, some Misère hands make equally good
No-Trumps hands, and visa-versa.
Among strong players you can bid six of anything with confidence,
because the bid will never stop there; it almost always gets to seven,
and usually gets to eight.
This is where the serious bids begin. In a perfect world everyone
has bid once, and you have an idea of what each person
holds. There will often be bids with conflicting interpretations, so
here is where you start your gamble. Your second bid is for the kind
of contract you really want, such as the suit for Trumps, or No-trumps,
or Misère. The difficulty comes when both partners want to make a
different contract. You can declare the strength of your hand by
making a jump bid (eg bidding eight when seven was possible), but
usually this just reduces the opportunity to exchange information through
later bids.
It takes a little practice to evaluate how many tricks a hand will
take. Start by assuming you have won the contract and collected
Kitty. You would usually lead your best Trump, and unless the
cards are distributed strangely, you will draw three or often four
Trumps. Thinking this way will help you count the tricks you can
win (Bridge and Whist texts carry lengthy discussions of such
issues). Now add the tricks you think your partner is telling you
about. But 500 is not all science, it is a gamble as well.
If you just bid exactly the number of tricks you are sure of then you
will not win against more adventurous players (and they will have more
excitement too). So it is common to count one more trick "from
kitty", one more "from partner", and sometimes another one "from
play". The latter might be for a low contract when you hold, say,
Kings in two off-suits each with a smaller card of the same suit
(rags), or when you are making a desperate defensive bid.
Don't expect that you will have high bids all to yourself. Unless
you make jump bids, then you have been bidding
with (or against) at least one other player. If your strength is
mostly in one suit, then the better your hand, the better everyone
else's hand, on average. And the better you and your partner are
at bidding, the better you will understand the potential of the hands
the partnership holds. That is why I have said that among strong
players the bid usually gets to eight. I recall one outstanding
hand where all four players were still bidding at ten!
Bids are often ambiguous. Maybe you partner started
the bidding at six Clubs. Ok, you think, partner has the Ace of
Clubs. A few bids later, an opponent bids 8 Clubs.
Obviously, they have lots of Clubs and are not concerned if your
partner has the Ace. Or maybe your partner was bluffing and
waiting to call Misère.
Sometimes you will make bids that are beyond the merits
of you and your partner's hands. For example your opponents have
bid eight Clubs and you think you can take two tricks against
them. You have bid seven Hearts, but eight Hearts would be
risky. If losing eight Hearts would not lose the game (and
especially if it would win the game) you might take the risk in order
to put pressure on the opposition to risk the higher bid.
Obviously some insight into your opponents' mental state and style of
play will be part of this decision.
Sometimes you will consider making bids beyond the above Tactical bids
in order to stop your opponents from winning the game. Such
tactics should be used sparingly. They rarely win in the long
term, and overdoing such spoiling tactics is often seen as poor
sportsmanship.
Count the cards during play. You must keep count of (at least) how many
cards have been played and which card is the highest in each suit. You
must also keep track of who holds which suits and you must know who has
discarded what suits, especially their first discard. The objective of
all this is to work out who has what suits, and who controls what suits.
This knowledge allows you and your partner to make best use of the cards
you have. It can, for example, help you avoid using a Trump when your
opponent cannot win that trick.
When you have won the bid you take the cards from kitty into your hand
and discard three cards. Often you will be able to
short-suit yourself (discard all the cards of
one suit, sometimes called void). Short-suiting yourself in a
suit that your opponents have bid can let you take a trick with a Trump
(trump in) or Joker when one opponent leads to the other's bid.
Try to avoid short-suiting yourself in a suit that you partner has bid,
for obvious reasons!
You have won the bid, collected kitty, made your discards, and must now
lead. If you have made a suit Trumps then you ought lead a Trump,
to draw them out and avoid opponents trumping your off-suit leads.
This first lead should be the highest you have, even if you do not have
the best cards in the suit, so that you draw out those higher cards.
The same argument is used for No-trumps.
What if you cannot lead high? Sometimes the cards you have will
not take any tricks if you lead high. This can be the case if you
have somehow won the bid in the suit your partner wanted to go, or if
you have won the bid in an attempt to stop your opponents from winning,
or if you got left with a bid, or just did not get the cards from kitty
you had gambled on. In this case a low lead may be necessary.
Of course everyone will immediately suspect that you are in trouble!
There is an important exception to the "lead high" rule, which you may
have already spotted. If you know your partner holds the best
card, then you can lead low to avoid wasting your own strength.
When leading low, your opponents will not know exactly why you are
doing it until the trick or even the hand is completed. The
reason is that the second player has to review the "second player plays
low" rule. Should they play low, and possibly lose the trick, or
should the second player play high? Most strong players play a
winning card (but not their strongest) in this situation, to try to
force the third player to play their best card to win the trick.
This is why leading low can work to get you out of trouble: it often
draws the high cards you were looking for.
The opponent to your right has led, the opponent to your left will play
after you, and your partner will play last in perfect knowledge of what
card will take the trick. If it is early in the hand (hence you
do not know what cards everyone holds) and you play a high card, your
opponent may go higher. If you play low then your opponent has to
guess what cards your partner has. Later in the the hand you will
often find that you cannot or should not follow this rule, because you
have less choice of what card to play, and also more knowledge of what
cards the other players hold.
By extension of the above reasoning, third player plays high unless your
high card would not stop the fourth player winning the trick.
Simply put, we want to avoid taking a trick when our partner is already
winning, or will win it. We don't want to waste our winning
cards. If we are playing last the decision is easy. It is
hardest when we are playing second, but you can extend the above
reasoning to cover this case also.
Some of the Trumps have been played and you have the lead. You
don't have (m)any more tricks in your hand until more cards fall.
Now is the time to lead low in the suit your partner bid first.
If you don't have any of those then lead to your partner's first
discard. Because you don't have perfect information you cannot be sure
that you partner will win the trick; their bid may have been a bluff,
they may have had no choice about their discard, or they might have
indicated a strength without having the best. This kind of lead can
force your opponents to play a valuable Trump and so can be a vital part
of their defeat.
As has been mentioned a few times, your first discard should be used to
indicate an off-suit where you have control. This would usually
be a different suit to the one you first bid. The complication
comes in No-trumps or Misère when you hold the Joker. If you
discard you are saying that you hold no cards of that suit, so you
cannot play the Joker in that suit later.
You have gained the lead and are not sure what to do. You already
know whether to lead trumps or not, or lead to your partner's bid.
When these alternatives are not available, in many situations you should
lead your long suit (the one you have most of), especially if you have
control in that suit. This tactic is most useful in No Trumps or
when trumps have become scarce. If your opponents follow suit then
you win valuable tricks, while the cards they play make your lower cards
into winners. If they cannot trump, you just keep winning tricks.
When your partner cannot follow suit, they can discard (we hope) losing
cards. But your opponents are playing twice as many cards, and
quickly reach the point where one or the other must choose which
potential winner to keep. All things being equal, half the time
they will choose wrongly. Lead out your long (strong) suit.
In Misère the bidder is contracting to not win any tricks.
The bidder takes up kitty, discards, and leads as usual, but the
bidder's partner does not play the hand. Misère is played as No
Trumps, so the No Trumps rules apply to the Joker.
If the rules are that Joker is highest then the
bidder will usually discard it. But if Joker is best then it
will be retained; this makes Misère (too) much easier.
There are two kinds of Misère bid: Misère and Open Misère.
The difference is that after playing the first trick in Open Misère,
the bidder must lay the remaining nine cards of their hand face-up on
the table. So when playing against Open Misère you can see all
of your opponent's remaining cards.
There are four main tactics the bidder can use with their lead.
The bidder might
- lead the lowest card of a suit,
- lead a card they know is lower than any other card in your or
your partners hand,
- short-suit their hand by leading
their last card of a suit,
- lead a card that they know can be beaten.
Two or three of these tactics can also be combined.
If the bidder leads the lowest card of a suit the only way the bidder
will take the trick is if you and your partner have no cards of the
suit. This would indicate the bidder's team made a mistake in
going Misère or the bidder made a mistake with their lead, because
they should have known that their team held a high number of cards in
that suit.
If the bidder leads a card they know is lower than any other card in
your or you partners hand, it will look like a high lead to you.
Does it mean that the bidder has a problem in this suit? Causing
confusion is the reason for playing cards from the "wrong end" of a
sequence. While other factors may cause you to do something else,
playing your higher cards on the first trick is usually the best
response (but read on).
If the bidder leads a card that they know can be beaten, they are
taking a chance that the winning cards are in their partner's hand or
that you or your partner will either be forced to take it or take it
by mistake. The player on the bidder's left does not know the
bidder's motive; all you know is whether you can play under the lead
or not. If there is a good chance your partner is void and you
can play under it you should take the chance; sometimes you'll win,
sometimes you'll have done just what the bidder wanted.
Usually you or your partner take the first trick and then must make
the bidder take a trick. There are two challenges for you and
your partner: to know which of you has the low cards that the bidder
might take, and to make sure the other one of you can avoid taking
the trick. Each of you solve the first problem by evaluating
your own hand; if you think you have the cards to force the bidder to
win a trick then you will try to take the lead and then try to be
sure your partner will not take the crucial card when you lead
it. Sometimes you will just have to lead and hope!
In order for your partner to short-suit
themselves in the bidder's vulnerable suit, you should lead the other
suits until you find one where the bidder follows suit but your
partner can discard. Be careful though, the bidder may only need
to make one discard to make their hand safe! Use your knowledge
of the bids to guide your leads. It is best if the
lead is with the player on the bidder's right, so that they play
without knowing exactly card will be played after them.
Playing Misère (especially with an imperfect hand) can be very
exciting, and playing well against it requires as much skill and
judgement on it's own as the rest of 500. Much more can be
written, but I think this section will give you a good start.
Among strong players Misère is an easy bid to make and win.
The power of a Misère bid is to force opponents to bid higher.
So where a school has a mix of abilities it is common for the weaker
players to want to ban it. One compromise in this situation is
to give Misère a score of 230 and Open Misère a score of 330.
This allows players more opportunity of bidding over those pesky
Misère bids!
Written October 2003. Last updated July 2005.
Copyright Andrew Blucher 2003-2005.
