The best-loved card game of Russian kitchens and dachas: three players, 24 cards and a race to a thousand points. Win the auction, take the talon, declare marriages to change trumps and make your contract.
Goal: Be the first to reach 1000 points over a series of deals.
Three people play with a 24-card pack: nine to ace in each of the four suits. Within a suit the cards rank ace, ten, king, queen, jack, nine — note that the ten beats the king!
Card values: ace 11, ten 10, king 4, queen 3, jack 2, nine 0. Altogether the cards in a deal are worth 120 points.
A marriage (king and queen of the same suit) is worth: spades 40, clubs 60, diamonds 80, hearts 100.
Each player gets 7 cards; 3 cards are left face down in the middle: this is the talon (in Russian, the “prikup”). The deal passes clockwise after every hand.
The player to the dealer's left opens the bidding and must bid at least 100. Then, in turn, each player either raises by at least 5 (all bids are multiples of 5) or passes; a player who passes is out of the auction. When only one is left, the highest bidder becomes the declarer and the bid becomes the contract.
You may not bid more than 120 unless you hold a marriage; with marriages the limit is 120 plus their value (for example 160 with the spade marriage, 220 with the heart marriage). If the others pass, the opener plays at their own bid (usually 100) — there is never a redeal.
The declarer turns the 3 talon cards face up for everyone to see and adds them to their hand. Then they pass one card of their choice face down to each opponent, so that everyone holds 8 cards.
At this point the declarer may raise the contract (within the same limits as in the bidding), but never lower it.
Eight tricks are played. The declarer leads to the first trick; the winner of each trick leads to the next.
You must follow suit. If you cannot, you must play a trump when a trump suit is in force and you have one; otherwise you may play any card. There is no obligation to beat the highest card.
The highest trump wins the trick; if no trump was played, the highest card of the suit led wins. At the start of every deal there are no trumps.
A player who won the previous trick and holds the king and queen of a suit may declare the marriage by leading one of the two cards: the marriage points are scored at once and that suit becomes trumps immediately, starting with this very trick.
Trumps change every time someone declares another marriage. No marriage can be declared on the first lead of a deal: you must have won a trick first.
Everyone counts the points of the cards in their tricks plus any marriages they declared. If the declarer reaches the contract, they score exactly the contract; if they fall short by even one point, the contract is subtracted from their score.
The opponents score their own points rounded to the nearest multiple of 5: 17 becomes 15, 18 becomes 20.
The first player to reach 1000 points wins. If two players reach it in the same deal, the declarer wins; if the declarer is not one of them, the higher score wins. After 200 deals the game ends anyway and the player with the most points wins.
With the barrel (in Russian, the “bochka”) nobody may stand between 880 and 999 points: a player who gets there is held at 880 and “climbs onto the barrel”. From there they can only win as declarer, by making a contract of at least 120; in other deals they score nothing.
They have three deals to do it: if they have not won by the third, they lose 120 points (dropping to 760) and come off the barrel. If they fail a contract as declarer, the contract is subtracted and they fall off at once. You can also win by jumping past the barrel, going over 1000 in a single deal, and several players may sit on the barrel at the same time.