Tarneeb

Also known as Tarnib, Tarnibe, Hakam

Players

4 players

Deck

1 standard deck (52 cards)

Time

30-60 minutes

Difficulty

Easy

Category

Trick-taking

Setup

An ordinary 52-card pack, shuffled and cut, ranking the way you expect from the ace down to the two. Every card goes out, singly, thirteen to a player. Nothing is left over and nothing is turned up — this game has no trump suit whatever until somebody has won the right to name one, which is the entire point of it.

Before anything else, the direction. This table turns right. Bidding goes anti-clockwise, play goes anti-clockwise, the deal moves anti-clockwise after each hand, and the player sitting on the dealer's right speaks first. The first lead belongs to whoever wins the auction, from whichever seat. Say the direction out loud before the opening hand; almost everything else in this collection runs the other way, and half an hour in it is an argument rather than a correction. Some tables turn the whole game clockwise instead, in which case it is the dealer's left who opens the bidding.

Two partnerships of two, fixed for the session, with your partner opposite you. Pick the first dealer at random.

One sheet of paper, two columns, and room to go below zero in both of them — you will need it.

The name is the trump suit. In Arabic the trump suit here is the tarneeb, which leaves the game named after its own trump — a fair description of where the interest lies. It is played across the Levant, through much of the Middle East besides, and in Tanzania; it may have originated in Lebanon. The Arabian Peninsula calls it hakam. Anyone who has played whist will be at home inside a single hand, and everything that makes this different is in the auction and in what the scoring does with it afterwards.

Play

Bidding opens with the player to the dealer's right and travels anti-clockwise. A bid is simply a number: how many of the thirteen tricks your side promises to take. Seven is the lowest anyone may say and thirteen the highest, and each bid has to beat the one before it. Pass and you are finished for this auction; you cannot come back in later even if the bidding goes round again.

With all four passing on the first circuit, the hand is dead. The same dealer gathers the cards, shuffles and deals again. Some tables instead force the dealer to bid seven rather than let the hand die.

Otherwise the auction runs round as many times as it needs to until three players have dropped out. The survivor now names the tarneeb, or else chooses to do without any trump suit at all, and leads to the first trick.

What that survivor has actually bought is worth being clear about, because it is not what the number suggests. The bid buys the right to choose trump and to lead, and it sets the price of failure. It does not set the reward: a side that makes its bid scores the tricks it actually took, so bidding seven and taking ten is worth ten. The number is a bar to clear rather than a target to hit.

The play is plain trick-taking with nothing unusual in it. Follow the suit that was led if you hold it. Holding none of it, do whatever you like — put a trump on, which is the whole point of having one, or throw a card from some other suit away. Nobody is ever obliged to trump. A trick goes to the biggest trump played to it, or, where nobody trumped at all, to the best card of whichever suit opened it. Whoever takes a trick leads to the next one, and thirteen tricks empty the hands.

A little conventional technique goes a long way here, and several pieces of it have names. Tashleeh is the declarer's business of drawing trumps out of the defenders' hands early, so that the long suit you chose the contract on can actually run. Ta'leem is the partner's job: having run out of trumps, lead a low card of some suit to tell your partner that is where you want the next lead to come back to. Signalling by how you put the card down has its own vocabulary too: slamming a card asks your partner to come back to that suit, and throwing the last card of a suit with a flick is na'f. Neither is allowed everywhere, and the slam in particular is frowned on as unprofessional where the game is taken seriously.

Goal & scoring

A game runs across as many hands as it takes for one side to reach the agreed target. Thirty-one and forty-one are both standard and the sources genuinely split on which is the default, so name the figure before the first deal; fifty-one and sixty-one are played too, and simply make for a longer evening.

Each hand settles like this. The bidding side counts the tricks it took. Reach the bid and that count is the score — not the bid, the tricks. Fall short and the bid is subtracted from your total instead, and the defenders pick up one point for each trick of their own.

That asymmetry is the whole strategic engine, and it is worth sitting with for a moment. When a contract stands up, the defenders score nothing whatever, however many tricks they scraped together. So bidding is not only a way of scoring; it is the only way to stop the other side scoring at all. A side that keeps passing on marginal hands does not stay safe, it simply stops being paid. Meanwhile there is no bonus for accuracy and no penalty for undershooting, so the sensible bid is the lowest number that wins you the auction rather than an honest estimate of your hand.

Taking all thirteen tricks is kaboot. Off a bid of less than thirteen it is worth 16 — the thirteen tricks plus three for the sweep. Bid thirteen outright and bring it home and it pays 26. Bid thirteen and drop even one trick and it costs 16, with the defenders scoring double for every trick they took, which makes it the most expensive thing anyone can attempt at this table.

Scores go negative and stay on the sheet. A side that has been set twice can find itself needing most of the game back before the target is even in view.

Variants

Egyptian Tarneeb — Popular in Egypt, and a substantially bigger game. Each call carries a proposed trump suit along with its number of tricks, the suits ranked clubs lowest, then diamonds, hearts, spades, and no trumps above them all — so seven clubs is the cheapest call available and thirteen no trumps the dearest, and you overcall either by taking more tricks or by taking the same number in a better suit. Two things make the auction unlike bridge's. Passing does not put you out: you may come back in later, and even raise your own bid if the other three pass, which then reopens the auction for everybody. And a double is not a bid, so it does not restart anything. Bidding ends only when a full circuit passes with nobody calling. A doubled contract doubles what the bidding side wins or loses, with a redouble taking it to four times in some circles, and the target is normally 41.

One bid each — Played in parts of Lebanon and much the fastest version of the auction. Every player speaks exactly once and then it is over — no raising, no second thoughts, no reading the table across three circuits. Because the dealer speaks last, the dealer alone may take the contract by matching the highest bid rather than beating it, which is a real advantage and the compensation for having dealt.

Throwing in a hopeless hand — A test for a hand with literally nothing in it, and a mercy where the alternative is thirteen tricks of watching. You may throw the cards in if you hold no ace, no king in a suit of two or more, no queen in a suit of three or more, and no jack in a suit of four or more — that is, no card anywhere that could take a trick against an opponent cashing that suit from the top down. Where it applies, the deal passes on and the next dealer shuffles. Accounts differ on its status — some give it as a standing right any player may exercise, others as something the table has to have agreed beforehand.

Ten in one suit — Some tables require a player dealt ten or more cards of a single suit to declare themselves one way or another rather than quietly bidding seven with it. The choice is to pass outright, to bid kaboot and undertake all thirteen tricks with your partner's help, or to throw the hand in for a redeal by the same dealer. The rule exists because a ten-card suit makes the auction meaningless — nobody else can compete — and the game is more interesting if such a hand has to be either declared or discarded.

Trump on the first trick — The declarer is obliged to lead a trump to the opening trick rather than choosing freely. It takes away the option of setting up a side suit before drawing trumps, and it hands the defenders one clear piece of information immediately. It is given as a regional rule rather than the norm, so it is worth asking about before the first deal.

• classic
• counting
• partnership
• strategy

Rules checked against Pagat, Wikipedia, GameRules.com.