Printable Whist Score Sheet

Whist is one of the simplest trick-taking games to score on this whole site: there's no bidding to reconcile against the result, no meld to add, and no penalty structure beyond straightforward tricks won. A sheet for Whist can stay genuinely minimal, which is worth appreciating precisely because so few other trick games on this site can say the same.

The scoring rule itself

Each side (Whist is traditionally played as fixed two-player partnerships) needs to win more than six of the thirteen tricks dealt in a hand — the first six tricks won by either side don't score anything at all ("the book"), and only tricks won beyond six count, at one point each. A side winning nine tricks scores 3 points that hand (nine minus the six-trick book); the other side, having taken four tricks, scores nothing.

Why "the book" doesn't need its own column

Because the first six tricks either side wins are simply subtracted before scoring, a sheet doesn't need to track the book separately — recording the final trick count per side for a hand and subtracting six from whichever side has more than that is the entire calculation. This is meaningfully simpler than a game like Spades or Pitch, where the scoring depends on a bid made beforehand as well as the tricks actually taken.

Reaching a small target score

Because each hand is worth so few points (typically 0-7 per side, since a maximum possible margin is 13 tricks total split unevenly), Whist games are traditionally played to a comparatively low target — 5 or 7 points is common — rather than the 100-or-more targets seen in bidding-based trick games. A sheet should note the agreed target at the top, since it's the main variable between different tables' games.

Trump, and why it doesn't complicate the sheet

A trump suit is set each hand (commonly by turning up the last card dealt), and trump cards outrank all other suits during play — but this affects only which cards win tricks, not how points are calculated once the trick count is final. The sheet's job starts and ends with "how many tricks did each side actually win," regardless of how the trump suit shaped the play that got them there.

Honors: an optional bonus some tables still play

A traditional variant awards extra points for holding specific high trump cards ("honors" — the Ace, King, Queen, and Jack of the trump suit) dealt to one side, on top of the ordinary trick-based score. Modern casual games mostly drop this entirely and score purely on tricks won past the book, but it's worth confirming which convention a table is using, since honors can add points to a side's total without a single extra trick being played.

The deal, following suit, and how trump is determined each hand are explained on the full Whist rules page, with book-and-trick totals worked through on the scoring deep-dive. A suspected revoke (failing to follow suit when able to) is covered in detail on the dispute page, including what happens once one's confirmed.

Does either side ever lose points for winning fewer than six tricks? No — Whist has no penalty structure at all; a side that wins fewer than six tricks (losing the book) simply scores 0 for that hand, the same as it would for winning exactly six. Nothing is ever subtracted from a running total in standard Whist.

Can Whist be scored for more than two partnerships, such as three or four individual players instead of two teams? Whist is traditionally a fixed-partnership game, and its simple over-the-book scoring assumes exactly two sides splitting thirteen tricks; individual-player variants exist but typically borrow scoring ideas from Oh Hell or Spades rather than using standard Whist scoring unmodified.

Is there a reason casual groups often prefer Whist over a bidding-based trick game like Spades or Pitch? Mainly speed of scoring — with no bid to make or fail and no bag penalties to track, a Whist hand can be scored in seconds by anyone at the table, which is part of why it remains a common choice for a quick game between longer sessions of a more involved trick-taking game.

Whist's simplicity makes it an outlier among the bidding-heavy trick games on this site's Card Games category hub, most of which score in a more involved way.