Bismarck

Full rules

1. Overview
2. The cards
3. Setup
4. The four contracts
5. Playing a deal
6. Scoring
7. Winning the game
8. Tips for beginners
9. Variants

Overview

Bismarck is a Swedish trick-taking game for exactly three players. A trick is one card from each player; the best card wins all three. A game has 12 deals. In each deal one player, forehand, chooses one of four contracts – three in which everyone tries to win tricks, one in which everyone tries to avoid them – and every player must choose each contract exactly once. Nobody has to win a fixed number of tricks: each player has a quota, and you score a point for every trick you do better than your quota and lose one for every trick you do worse.

• Players: exactly 3.
• You need: one standard 52-card deck without jokers, a score sheet and pencil.

The cards

In every suit the cards rank from high to low: A K Q J 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2. Deal and play go clockwise.

Setup

1. Dealer: choose the first dealer at random. After each deal, the turn to deal passes to the left.
2. Forehand: the player on the dealer's left is forehand for this deal. Forehand chooses the contract and leads to the first trick. Over the 12 deals, everyone is forehand four times.
3. Four cards face up: the dealer shuffles, the player on the dealer's right cuts, and the dealer deals the top four cards face up on the table.
4. Choosing the contract: looking only at these four cards, forehand announces the contract (see below) – and for Free choice, also the trump suit.
5. Dealing the hands: the dealer then deals the rest of the deck face down, one card at a time, so that everyone has 16 cards.
6. Forehand's exchange: forehand adds the four face-up cards to their hand (20 cards) and discards any four face down. The discards take no further part. Now everyone has 16 cards.

The four contracts

• Trumps are a suit that beats all the others.
• Each player must choose each contract once, so in the last round each forehand has only one contract left.
• In Free choice you may name spades again – so it pays to use Spader the first time you want spades as trumps.
• The three quotas always add up to 16, the number of tricks in a deal.

Playing a deal

1. Forehand leads – plays any card to the first trick.
2. The others play one card each, clockwise. You must follow suit – play a card of the suit led – if you can. If you can't, you may play any card. You never have to beat the cards already played, and you don't have to trump.
3. Who wins the trick: the highest trump in it; if there is none, the highest card of the suit led. The winner leads to the next trick.
4. After 16 tricks, everyone counts the tricks they won.

Scoring

Draw a grid: one row per player, one column per contract, and room on the right for running totals. When a player chooses a contract, mark their box with an X – they can't choose it again.

• Spader, Valfri, Sang: a player who wins exactly their quota scores 0. Each trick more scores +1, each trick fewer −1.
• Pass: exactly the quota scores 0. Each trick fewer scores +1, each trick more −1.

The three scores of a deal always add up to 0 – an easy check.

Example: Carla deals, Anna is forehand and chooses Sang. Anna wins 6 tricks (quota 8: −2), Ben 6 (quota 4: +2), Carla 4 (quota 4: 0). Next deal Anna deals, Ben is forehand and chooses Pass. Ben wins 2 tricks (quota 4: +2), Carla 5 (quota 6: +1), Anna 9 (quota 6: −3). Totals: Anna −5, Ben +4, Carla +1.

Winning the game

After 12 deals – everyone has played each contract once as forehand – the player with the highest total wins. If two are level at the top, they share the win.

Tips for beginners

• Look at the four face-up cards and your remaining choices: a high spade or two among them makes Spader attractive; low cards call for Pass.
• Keep Pass for a deal where the face-up cards are low. Later in the game you may be forced into it with a poor choice.
• As forehand, discard short suits: with a suit gone, you can trump in or throw away dangerous cards.
• The two other players effectively play together against forehand's high quota – but only until forehand is beaten, because they compete for the same tricks.

Variants

• See all cards first: at some tables forehand picks up all 20 cards before choosing the contract.
• Other face-up cards: some deal the last four cards face up instead, or let the dealer choose four cards from the middle of the deck (never the first or last card, never two in a row).
• Must trump: in Spader and Valfri, a player who can't follow suit must play a trump if they have one.
• Classic Bismarck: in the older Swedish form, published in 1949, there are only nine deals in a fixed order: three deals Trumf (the suit of the first face-up card is trumps), then three Sang, then three Noll (Pass). The quotas are the same.
• British Bismarck: each player deals four times in a row. The dealer keeps the last four cards without showing them and discards four; the player on the dealer's left leads. The dealer's four contracts come in a fixed order: no trumps; trumps decided by cutting a card before the deal; the dealer's choice of trumps; and misère (Pass). The dealer's quotas are those of forehand above.