How to play Judgement

How the game works

Each hand, everyone gets the same number of cards and one suit is trumps. Before play, each player bids the number of tricks they expect to take, and then the cards are played out one trick at a time. Take exactly your bid and you score; miss by even one, over or under, and you score nothing. The hand size and the trump suit change every hand, on a fixed schedule.

Judgement belongs to the same family as Oh Hell and Nomination Whist. In North India the name is sometimes used for Call Break, a different game in which every player gets 13 cards each hand and spades are always trumps.

The cards and the deal

Use one ordinary 52-card pack without jokers. In every suit the ace is highest, then king, queen, jack, 10 and so on down to 2. Three to eight people can play, each for themselves.

Play moves clockwise, to the left. Agree who deals first; after each hand the deal passes one seat to the left. The dealer shuffles and gives everyone the same number of cards, and any left over are put aside unseen.

This guide uses a common pattern: seven cards each in the first hand, then one fewer every hand down to a single card, so seven hands in all. With eight players the pack cannot stretch to seven each, so start at six.

Trumps

Trumps follow a fixed order: spades, diamonds, clubs, hearts, then round again, and the first hand is always spades. No card is turned up to pick trumps, and nobody chooses them.

Hand	Cards each	Trumps
1	7	♠ Spades
2	6	♦ Diamonds
3	5	♣ Clubs
4	4	♥ Hearts
5	3	♠ Spades
6	2	♦ Diamonds
7	1	♣ Clubs

The name Kachuful (literally “raw flower”) is built from the suits’ Gujarati names in trump order: Kari (spades), Chukat (diamonds), Falli (clubs) and Lal (hearts). In English, S, D, C, H can be remembered as “Soon Deeds Complete Here”.

Bidding

After the deal, everyone looks at their cards and bids the number of tricks they will take. The player on the dealer’s left bids first, the others follow clockwise, and the dealer bids last.

• A bid can be anything from 0 to the number of cards in your hand. Zero is a real bid: you aim to take no tricks at all.
• Everyone must bid. Nobody can pass, and a bid cannot be changed.
• Bids are said out loud, so later bidders know what the earlier ones want.

The dealer’s rule. The dealer may not bid the number that would make the bids add up to the number of cards in each hand. That way the bids can never all succeed: someone has to miss. This is known as the hook.

Say four players hold seven cards each. The first three bid 3, 1 and 2, making 6. The dealer may bid anything from 0 to 7 except 1, since 6 plus 1 makes 7. If the other bids already total more than the cards in hand, nothing is ruled out.

Playing a trick

The player on the dealer’s left leads the first trick with any card. Going clockwise, everyone else adds one card.

• Follow suit. If you hold a card of the suit led, you must play one.
• Can’t follow? Play any card: cut with a trump, or throw away a card of another suit. Cutting is never required, and you never have to beat a trump already on the trick.
• Who takes it. The highest trump wins. With no trump played, the highest card of the suit led wins. Other suits never win.

The winner of each trick leads the next, until every card in the hand has been played. Only the number of tricks counts; the cards inside them are worth nothing.

A trick too many ruins a bid as surely as a trick too few, so once you have your number, play to lose the rest.

Scoring

After the last trick, everyone compares the tricks they took with their bid.

• Exactly right: score 10 plus your bid. A bid of 4 made exactly scores 14; a bid of 0 made exactly (no tricks at all) scores 10. For any bid below 10, just put a 1 ahead of it.
• Anything else: score 0, however far over or under you were. Nothing is taken off your total.

Bid	Tricks taken	Score
0	0	10
2	2	12
4	4	14
4	3	0
1	2	0
7	7	17

Keep a running total for each player.

Winning the game

The game ends after the one-card hand, and the highest total wins. If two or more players tie for the top score, they share first place. There is no standard tie-break, so if your table wants one, agree on it before you start.

Variants

The core never changes: bid exactly, take exactly, and trumps in a fixed order. Much of the rest is a house rule, so agree on these before the first deal.

• Counting up. Some tables start at one card each and add a card every hand.
• Bigger hands. Some start at 8, 10 or 13 cards, or at the most the pack allows (13 each for four players).
• Down and back up. Some go down to one card and back up, playing the one-card hand once (13 hands from a seven-card start), or go up first and then down. The trump order simply carries on.
• A no-trump hand. Some add a fifth step after hearts: a hand with no trumps, where the highest card of the suit led always wins.
• No dealer’s rule. Some let the dealer bid any number, so the bids can add up exactly.
• Finger bidding. Some have everyone show their bid on their fingers at the same moment, so there is no last bidder and no dealer’s rule.
• Multiplied scores. Some score ten times the bid for an exact hit, with a made zero worth 10. Some of these also take off 10 points for every trick a player is over or under.
• The other way round. Some tables play counter-clockwise.
• Two packs. Some big groups shuffle two packs together. If both copies of a card land in one trick, the later one wins.

Quick reference

• Players: 3 to 8, each for themselves, one 52-card pack, aces high.
• Hands: 7 cards each, then 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 (start at 6 with eight players).
• Trumps: spades, diamonds, clubs, hearts, repeating, starting with spades.
• Bidding: clockwise from the dealer’s left, 0 up to the cards held. The dealer bids last and cannot make the bids total the cards held.
• Play: follow suit if you can, otherwise anything. Highest trump wins, else the highest card of the suit led.
• Scoring: an exact bid scores 10 plus the bid; any miss scores 0.
• Winning: the highest total after the one-card hand.