Printable Five Hundred Score Sheet

Five Hundred's scoring is built around one asymmetry that trips up new scorers immediately: the bidding side scores (or loses) the full value of their bid, while the other side scores a flat 10 points per trick regardless of what anyone bid. A sheet for this game needs two clearly separate figures per hand, not one shared "who won more" column, because both sides can score points on the very same hand.

How the bid side scores

The highest bidder becomes the contractor, takes the three-card widow, discards back down to a proper hand, and tries to win at least as many tricks as bid (6 through 10) with their named suit as trump. Succeeding scores the full bid value; failing loses that same value from their running total — which means a bid column needs a plus/minus sign built into how it's recorded, not just a number.

How the defending side scores, completely separately

Regardless of whether the bidder makes or fails their contract, the two defending players together score 10 points for every trick they won that hand. This happens independently of the bid outcome — a defending side can score points on a hand the bidder also succeeded on, which is the single most common thing a new sheet gets wrong by treating the hand as a zero-sum split between only two outcomes.

Misère bids: an entirely different scoring shape

A Misère bid is a contract to lose every single trick rather than win any. If the bidder succeeds (takes zero tricks), they score the Misère's point value; if they take even one trick, that same value is subtracted instead. Because Misère plays out completely differently from a normal trump contract — no widow taken, often played with the bidder's hand exposed in the "open" variant — it's worth its own row style on the sheet rather than being squeezed into the standard bid-and-tricks columns.

Reaching 500, and the negative-500 shortcut

The game ends the moment either side's running total reaches 500 or more — or the moment the opposing side's total drops to negative 500, which ends the game immediately in the other side's favor without needing to reach positive 500 at all. A sheet with a visible running total per side makes both of these endings obvious the instant they happen, rather than requiring a recount to notice a team has crossed the threshold.

The widow, bidding order, and Grand Slam variants worth extra points are all explained on the full Five Hundred rules page. The scoring deep-dive steps through bid-and-trick totals in full, and a contested bid value that comes up mid-game is exactly what the dispute page covers.

Do the defenders' 10-points-per-trick scores count toward reaching 500 the same as bid points? Yes — both figures add to the same running total per side. A side can win the game entirely through accumulated defending points across several hands, even without ever winning a bid outright, though in practice bids tend to score faster.

Can a side score points on a hand where the other side also succeeds? Yes, and this is the rule most new players miss — a bidder making their contract scores the bid value, and the defenders simultaneously score 10 points for each trick they took that same hand. Both numbers are added to their respective running totals from the same single hand.

Does the joker matter for scoring, or only for play? The joker is normally the single highest trump card in play and affects who wins tricks, but it has no separate scoring value of its own — whichever side's trick it wins contributes to that side's trick count exactly like any other card, feeding into either the bidder's contract count or the defenders' 10-points-per-trick total depending on who took it.

A three-player variant worth a note on the sheet

Five Hundred is commonly played with three players instead of four, using a reduced deck and a slightly larger widow, with each player scoring individually rather than in fixed partnerships. The same bid-value-versus-10-per-trick scoring split still applies, but because there are three separate running totals instead of two, it's worth widening the sheet's columns rather than trying to reuse a four-player layout built for two side-by-side totals.

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