Objective

Bid on how many tricks your team will win. Meet or beat your goal to earn points according to your bid, but overbid and you get nothing. Be the first team to reach 500 points.

Gameplay

Players of a game of 500 play with a 43-card deck. One joker is added and twos, threes, & black fours are removed. Each player is dealt a ten-card hand. The remaining three are dealt into the "blind" (or "kitty" or "hole").

A round consists of a bidding phase and then a playing phase.

Bidding Phase

Each player, starting with the person to the dealer's left, declares how many tricks he/she expect their team to take. The next player must then either outbid the previous player or pass. The bidder's partner may choose to increase their partner's bid to gain more points or pass. Once a player passes, they can no longer bid. The lowest possible bid is 6. If everyone passes, the cards are re-dealt. To bid "no trump" means no suit will be a trump suit (joker is the highest ranking card) and all tricks must adhere to the suit of the card led.

American Bidding

In "American-style" bidding, each player can only bid once. A player cannot bid 6, but instead can "inkle" or "indicate" a suit to their partner. Only the first teammate can "inkle". This is not considered a bid. If all players "inkle" or pass, the cards are re-dealt.

Australian Bidding

In "Australian-style" bidding, bidding ends when all players except one pass.

The player who bids the highest adds the cards from the "blind" into their hand. They then must choose three cards to discard so they have the same number of cards in their hand as everyone else.

Misère

Misère (sometimes called "nullo") is a bid that ranks between 7-trick bids and 8-trick bids. A player who wins this bid must not win any tricks to gain points. The bidder's partner does not participate in this round. A misère bid is worth 250 points. If playing with "reduced misère," the bid is worth 130 points and ranks between 6-trick bids and 7-trick bids.

In Australian bidding, a player may not bid misère before a player bids 7 tricks.

Open Misère is the same as a misère bid except that the player who wins the bid must play with their hand revealed after the first trick. In American bidding, this is worth 500 points and ranks between 10♦ and 10♥. If playing with "reduced misère," this bid is worth 330 points and ranks between 8-trick bids and 9-trick bids.

Play Phase

Players now play their cards to win tricks. The suit that won the bid is the "trump" suit. Cards of this suit will win the trick, even if other cards of a different suit have a higher rank.

Card Ranks

Ranks of the trump suit differ from the standard ranking. From highest to lowest...

• Joker
• Jack of the trump suit (known as the right bower)
• Jack of the same color as the trump suit (known as the left bower)
• Ace
• King
• Queen
• 10
• 9
• 8
• 7
• 6
• 5

Ranks of non-trump suits remain the same. (A, K, Q, J, 10...)

Scoring

If the team that won the bid wins at least as many tricks as they bid, they earn points according to a predetermined scale based on suit and number of tricks. The team does not earn more points for taking more tricks than they bid. The team that did not win the bid earns 10 points for each trick they won.

If the team that won the bid fails to win as many tricks as they bid, the same number is subtracted from their score.

Winning

The team that reaches 500 points first wins the game. If a team's score reaches below -500, that team loses.

A team cannot win the game if they did not win the bid in that round. The maximum score without winning the bid is 490.