Printable Oh Hell Score Sheet

Oh Hell (Nomination Whist) turns ordinary trick-taking on its head: players bid exactly how many tricks they expect to win before seeing how the hand plays out, and only an exact match scores anything at all. A sheet for this game needs to record both the bid and the actual result side by side, since the gap — or lack of one — between those two numbers is the entire scoring system.

The standard scoring formula

Under the most common ("blackout" or "simple") method, a player who bids and wins exactly that many tricks scores 10 points plus their bid — bidding 4 and winning exactly 4 scores 14 points. A player who wins any other number of tricks, over or under their bid by even one, scores 0 for that hand entirely. There's no partial credit for coming close, which is what makes recording the bid alongside the actual trick count essential — a sheet showing only trick counts can't tell a successful bid of 3 from a failed bid of 4 that also won 3 tricks.

Why bidding zero is a real, scoreable strategy

A bid of zero (aiming to lose every trick) is fully legal and scores 10 points if achieved — the same flat "made the bid" bonus as any other exact bid, just with no additional tricks added on top. This is worth its own clear mark on the sheet distinct from a failed low bid, since a player who bids zero and takes zero tricks scores a full 10 points, while a player who bids zero and takes even one trick scores nothing at all.

The changing hand size across a session

Oh Hell is typically played across several hands with the dealt hand size changing round to round — often starting small, increasing to a maximum, then decreasing again back down. Because the maximum possible bid changes with hand size, it's worth noting the hand size on each round's row, since a bid of 5 out of a 5-card hand (a bid to win everything) is a very different risk than a bid of 5 out of a 10-card hand.

Reading a round's result

Each row should show, per player: hand size, bid, tricks actually won, and the resulting score (10 plus bid if exact, 0 otherwise). A running total column tracks the game toward however many rounds the group has agreed to play — there's no fixed target score the way there is in a game like Gin Rummy; the game simply ends after the agreed number of hands.

Trump selection, the no-trump final rounds some variants use, and dealer bidding restrictions are all explained on the full Oh Hell rules page. Bid-versus-result examples are worked through on the scoring deep-dive. A miscounted trick right at the end of a hand is the argument this game produces most, and the dispute page covers how it's normally sorted out.

Does bidding the total number of tricks available (everyone else bidding zero) score differently? No — an exact bid scores the same 10-plus-bid formula regardless of how big or small the bid is relative to the hand. A correct bid of the entire hand size scores exactly as the formula predicts, same as any other exact bid.

Is there ever a restriction on what the dealer, specifically, is allowed to bid? Yes, in many common variants — the total of all bids at the table is not allowed to exactly equal the number of tricks available, which forces at least one player to be wrong; this restriction is usually applied to whichever player bids last (often the dealer), and it's worth confirming which seat carries that restriction before the first hand.

Trump rotation across a session

Many tables rotate the trump suit each hand in a fixed cycle, or turn the top card of the undealt stock face-up to determine trump for that hand alone, with a final round or two commonly played with no trump at all. Neither convention changes the scoring formula, but noting which trump-selection method a session used is worth a line on the sheet, since it affects how bidding strategy is read back afterward even though it doesn't touch the arithmetic itself.

Oh Hell's page lives on this site's Card Games category hub with its bidding-trick relatives Pitch, Skat, and Spades.