Five Hundred Rules

Five Hundred blends a euchre-style deck and bower system with a full competitive bidding auction more like bridge's — the result is a trick-taking game where naming the contract is as much a skill as playing the hand that follows it.

The deck

Five Hundred uses a deck built specifically for the number of players at the table rather than a plain 52-card pack — for four players, the common setup strips the deck down to the 7s through aces of each suit (32 cards) plus a single joker, for 33 cards total, dealt out unevenly with the remainder forming a small widow. Larger or smaller tables adjust the deck size (adding or removing low cards) to keep the deal even.

The auction

Starting to the dealer's left, players bid in turn, each naming a trump suit (or notrump) and a number of tricks they're committing their side to win, with each bid required to outrank the last either in trick count or in the fixed suit-ranking order (spades lowest, then clubs, diamonds, hearts, and notrump highest, though the exact ranking scale varies slightly by regional rule set). A player may also pass. The auction ends once every player but the highest bidder has passed, and the highest bidder's side becomes responsible for making that contract.

The widow

The player who wins the auction picks up the widow — the extra cards set aside during the deal — and then discards back down to a full hand, keeping their hand size correct while potentially strengthening it with whatever useful cards the widow contained.

Bowers, the joker, and trump order

Five Hundred uses the same bower promotion euchre does: the jack of the trump suit is the "right bower," the highest card in the hand, and the jack of the same-color suit becomes the "left bower," promoted into trump as the second-highest. The joker outranks both bowers, making it the single highest card in the game whenever it's in play (and it can also be played as if it were any suit in a notrump contract, a rule specific to the joker's flexible role). Below the joker and bowers, trump ranks in normal order, and off-suit cards rank normally with no bowers involved.

Misère bids

Beyond ordinary trick-bidding, Five Hundred allows a distinctive "misère" bid: a contract to win zero tricks at all, played with no trump suit in effect. A misère bid ranks at a fixed position in the bidding order (below some trick bids and above others, depending on the specific value table a group uses) and asks for the opposite skill of an ordinary contract — actively avoiding winning any trick rather than trying to win several.

Scoring: making it, or going set

If the bidding side wins at least as many tricks as their contract promised, they score a fixed point value tied to that specific bid (higher bids and higher-ranked trump suits are worth more points); if they fall short, they lose that same point value instead — a bid failed by a wide margin costs exactly the same as one failed by a single trick, which makes an overly ambitious bid a real, symmetrical risk. The other side scores 10 points for each trick they personally win, regardless of who won the bidding. The game is played to a target score, commonly 500 (the game's namesake number), and a team can also lose outright by falling to a sufficiently negative score before reaching it.

Origins: an American adaptation with a strong Australian following

Five Hundred was developed in the United States around the start of the 20th century, building directly on euchre's bower-and-trump structure while adding a full competitive bidding auction more in line with bridge, which was also taking shape as a distinct game around the same period. While its popularity faded in the US over the 20th century, it took root strongly in Australia, where it remains a well-known and actively played card game today, arguably more prominent there now than in the country where it originated.

The arguments this game actually produces

Exactly where a misère bid ranks against ordinary trick bids in the auction — different regional rule sets order it differently, and it's worth agreeing on a specific bid-ranking table before the first hand rather than discovering a disagreement mid-auction.

Questions that come up mid-hand

Can the joker be discarded, or must it always be kept in a bidding player's hand? It can be discarded like any other card if the bidder chooses, though given it's the single highest card in the game, doing so is rare and usually only happens under an unusual hand or discard requirement.

Does the joker have to follow suit like an ordinary trump card? In most rule sets, no — the joker can be played on any trick regardless of the suit led, since it's treated as belonging to trump (or, in notrump contracts, as a suit of the player's choosing) rather than any specific led suit.