Bazar Blot rules

Deck and deal

Four players in two teams, partners opposite each other. The deck is 32 cards — 7, 8, 9, 10, jack, queen, king, ace in four suits — and everyone gets eight.

Card values

A card is worth different points depending on the contract. In trump, the jack and nine jump above the ace — this is the single most important thing to internalise, because it decides which hands are worth bidding.

All-trump contracts use the trump column for every suit. Card points come to 152, plus 10 for the last trick (der) — 162 in a deal.

Strength order

• •In trump: J, 9, A, 10, K, Q, 8, 7
• •In any other suit: A, 10, K, Q, J, 9, 8, 7

Bazar: the bidding

Bidding opens at 8 and rises one step at a time; each bid is a promise about how much your team will score in this deal, on the same scale as the match score. Capot — a claim on all eight tricks — is a separate bid worth 25.

When you take the contract you also choose what it is played in: a trump suit, no-trump, or all-trump. No-trump and all-trump change what the cards are worth, so they are worth bidding for the right hand rather than as a bluff.

• •Bids start at 8 and go up by 1
• •Capot is bid as 25
• •Contract types: a trump suit, no-trump, or all-trump
• •The bidding ends when nobody raises; the last bidder plays the contract

Playing the tricks

• •The player to the dealer's side leads; play goes around the table
• •You must follow the suit that was led if you hold it
• •If you cannot follow, trump obligations apply — the game enforces them for you
• •Highest card in the led suit takes the trick, unless trump was played
• •The last trick is worth 10 extra points

Declarations

Runs and four-of-a-kinds in your hand are worth points if you declare them. Consecutive cards in one suit score by length:

King and queen of trump together — belote and rebelote — are worth 20.

Four of a kind

Four cards of the same rank are worth considerably more than any run, and the Armenian values are not the French ones:

In a no-trump contract four aces are worth 190 and every other four-of-a-kind 100. Only the team holding the single biggest declaration scores its declarations — the other team's runs and squares count for nothing.

Scoring a deal

Card points, declarations and the last-trick bonus are added up, then divided by ten and rounded — a fraction above a half rounds up, otherwise it rounds down. That is why a deal moves the score by roughly 16 and the match runs to 101.

The team that took the contract has to make its bid. If it does, both sides bank what they collected. If it fails, everything goes to the other side. Taking all eight tricks adds a capot bonus of 90 before the division.

Winning

First team to 101 takes the match. Because the score moves in steps of roughly 16, a match is normally six to eight deals — long enough for a bad deal to be recoverable, short enough that the last bid usually matters.