Oh Hell

Setup: One player is the scorekeeper. Have them label a sheet with a column for each player, and 12 rows with numbers in this order: 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Each row represents one hand, with the first hand having seven cards, the second hand having six cards, and so on.

Pick one player to start as the dealer, in the first round, they will deal out seven cards to each player. After they have dealt out the last card, they will put the deck down on the table and flip the top card for everyone to see. This top card is known as the trump, the suit of this card becomes all-powerful for this hand.

After cards are dealt and the trump suit is known, everyone must “bid” on how many “tricks” they believe they can win this hand. Everyone must bid at the same time, to do so, players will place one (or both) fists on the table to show they’re ready. Once every player has a fist on the table, they will all knock on the table together three times while saying “1, 2, 3”. Immediately after the third knock and saying three, players will stick out some or no fingers representing the number of their bid. The scorekeeper should record everyone's bid in the box that aligns with the hand and player Make sure to leave room in the box as two more numbers will be needed.

A trick consists of one person leading who plays any card they want. The card they play determines the suit of the trick, the player to the left of the leader plays a card from their hand if other players have a card of the suit of the trick (same suit the leader played) they must play it. If the player does not have a card that is the suit of the trick they may play any card in their hand. Players will continue playing cards with the turn order going to the left until it gets back to the leader. At this point, one player will have one the trick. To determine who wins the trick you first look to see if there are any trump cards in the trick, if there are, the highest trump card will win (aces are high). If there is no trump card the highest card in the suit of the trick will win. The player who played the winning card wins the trick, they should lump all the cards into a pile and place it in front of them so they can easily count how many tricks they won at the end of the hand. The player who won the last trick leads for the next trick, this pattern continues until everyone has played all their cards.

Once every trick has been won, the scorekeeper will record how many tricks each player won. Players who got the exact amount of tricks they bid will receive that many points, players who win a different number of tricks than they bid will lose the absolute value of the difference in their bid and number of tricks they won. The scorekeeper will add this score from each round to the player's total score and record this number as well. For example, a player who bid two and got two would get two points, whereas if they had bid two and gotten three they would get -1 points.

Additional info:
- it is common for players to have negative scores
- it is acceptable to bid 0 and get 0
- the scorekeeper is recording three things per round: everyone's bid, the number of tricks everyone got, and everyone's score in the game.