Playing the ‘Oh Hell’ Card Game

I know that the ‘H’ word is a ‘cuss’ word in some circles, but as I am from down under it is simply an exclamation and you can use it in this game. If you find it too offensive you can cal it ‘oh dang’ also. This is a good card game to bring people together. It enables you to make predictions on how you think the hand will play out.

 Decide the order of suits which you will be playing and stick to this order. The first rule is that the player need not follow suit but the winning card is the highest card tabled, and there are no trump cards.

 For the first hand deal in either direction 10 cards to each player face down on the table.

 Each player picks through his cards and estimates how many tricks, or hands they will likely win out of the ten tricks to be played in that hand.

 Once the player has decided how many tricks he/she will win, all players show with their fingers at the same time how many tricks they will win. The score keeper writes down each players estimation of tricks they expect to win. The fun here is that out of 10 tricks the total may amount to more tricks than what is available.

 The hand is played with the first person to the left of the dealer leading with a card of his/her choice., and each trick that is won is placed next to the player who won it. Players must win only the number of tricks they nominate and no less or more.

 The next hand is dealt with 9 cards each and the same rigmarole is followed. Each hand after that decreases by one card until players are dealt with one card each. As you can imagine it gets quite exciting when only one card is available.

 Scoring; each trick is worth 10 points and if the player achieves the number of tricks nominated, they get a bonus 20. If they don’t achieve the correct number of tricks then -10 is deducted for each nominated trick that they didn’t get or got over. eg if they nominated 4 and got only 3, they lose -10. If they got 6 then they lose -20.

 The players can set the winning total to aim for to finish the game. A good total to start with is 300 to win.