Twenty-Nine (29)

Full rules

1. Overview
2. The cards
3. Setup
4. Bidding
5. Choosing trumps
6. Playing – before trumps are declared
7. Playing – after trumps are declared
8. The pair
9. Scoring
10. Winning the game
11. Tips for beginners
12. Variants

Overview

Twenty-Nine is a partnership card game from northern India, Bangladesh and Nepal. It is a trick-taking game: each player plays one card, and the best card wins all four – together they form a trick. Some cards are worth card points, 28 in all. After seeing half their cards, players bid how many points their team will win; the highest bidder secretly chooses the trump suit. Nobody else knows which suit is trumps until a player can't follow suit. It is a close relative of Twenty-Eight.

• Players: exactly 4, in two fixed teams; partners sit opposite each other.
• You need: one standard 52-card deck. Nothing else – even the score is kept with cards.
• Direction: dealing and play go clockwise (to the left).

The cards

Take out the 7, 8, 9, 10, J, Q, K and A of every suit – 32 cards for play. Of the rest:

• the 2s to 5s (16 cards) form a face-down pile, the trump indicator;
• one red 6 and one black 6 per team are used for keeping score.

In every suit the cards rank, from high to low: J 9 A 10 K Q 8 7. The Jack is the highest card, and the Nine is second!

All cards together are worth 28 card points.

Setup

1. Dealer: choose the first dealer at random; afterwards the deal passes to the left.
2. The dealer shuffles and the player on the right cuts.
3. The dealer deals 4 cards to each player, one at a time, clockwise. The other 16 cards are put aside for now.

Bidding

A bid is a number: the minimum number of card points your team promises to win. The player on the dealer's left speaks first. Going clockwise, each player either bids higher than the last bid or passes. The lowest bid is 15, the highest 28. The bidding goes round as often as needed and ends when three players in a row have passed.

If the first three players all pass, the dealer must bid 15.

Choosing trumps

The highest bidder – the bidder – looks at their four cards and chooses a suit as trumps. Secretly, they arrange the pile of 2s to 5s so that a card of the chosen suit is at the bottom, and lay the pile face down. Nobody else may look.

Then the dealer deals 4 more cards to each player, so everyone has 8.

Playing – before trumps are declared

The player on the dealer's left leads to the first trick. Going clockwise, everyone plays one card:

• Follow suit: if you have a card of the suit that was led, you must play one.
• The trick is won by the highest card of the suit led. Cards of the secret trump suit have no special power yet.
• The winner of a trick leads to the next one.

The first player who cannot follow suit must ask the bidder to declare trumps. The bidder turns the indicator pile over and shows the bottom card to everyone. (If the bidder is the first who can't follow, they must declare trumps themselves.)

Playing – after trumps are declared

From the trick in which trumps are declared, the chosen suit is trumps: a trump beats every card of the other suits. A trick is won by the highest trump in it, or, without trumps, by the highest card of the suit led.

You must still follow suit if you can. If you can't, you may play any card – you never have to trump, not even the player who asked.

Example: Clubs are secret trumps. West leads 8♥, North follows with K♥. East has no hearts and asks: the bidder shows a club. East plays 7♣ – it's a trump now and beats K♥. South has no hearts either and plays J♣, the highest trump: South wins the trick.

The pair

The King and Queen of trumps together are the pair. Once trumps are declared, a player who holds both in hand may show them, immediately after they or their partner have won a trick.

• Pair shown by the bidder's team: its bid goes down by 4 (but not below 15).
• Pair shown by the opponents: the bid goes up by 4 (but not above 28).

Example: North bid 20. After East–West win a trick, West shows K♠ Q♠ (spades are trumps). North–South now need 24 points.

Scoring

After 8 tricks the bidder's team counts the card points in its tricks. If it has at least its bid (after any pair), it wins 1 game point; otherwise it loses 1 game point. The other team's score doesn't change.

If trumps were never declared (everyone could always follow suit), the deal is cancelled and nobody scores.

Keeping score with Sixes: each team places its red 6 and black 6 so that a number of red pips shows (a plus score) or of black pips (a minus score). Paper and pencil work too.

Example: North–South bid 17 and take 19 points: +1. Next deal East bids 22 but East–West take only 20: East–West −1.

Winning the game

The first team to reach +6 game points wins. A team that falls to −6 loses.

Tips for beginners

• Bid on Jacks and Nines. A Jack with the Nine of the same suit is a strong trump holding.
• Remember what's been played: only 28 points are in play, and the Jacks and Nines decide most deals.
• Save your King and Queen of trumps. Once one of them is played, the pair can't be shown any more.
• Don't give away points: if you can't win a trick and your partner isn't winning it, play a K, Q, 8 or 7.

Variants

All optional – agree on them beforehand.

• Last-trick point: the team that wins the last trick gets 1 extra card point – 29 in all, which is where the name comes from. According to pagat.com most players today leave it out.
• Bangladesh: play anticlockwise; the lowest bid is 16; a team's partner can take over the bidding. A pair lowers bids of 19 and 20 to 16 and higher bids by 4; bids of 16 to 18 aren't lowered.
• Seventh card: instead of choosing, the bidder may call "seventh card" – their seventh card (the third of the second round) becomes the trump indicator.
• Double and redouble: after trumps are chosen, an opponent may say "double" (the deal counts 2) and the bidder's team may answer "redouble" (4).
• Single hand: after the full deal, a player with a very strong hand may undertake to win all 8 tricks alone, played without trumps; they lead to the first trick. +3 or −3 (6 instead of 3 in some parts of West Bengal, according to pagat.com).
• Auto-double: bids of 21 or more count 2 game points.