A trick-taking card game for 3–7 players where the goal is to predict exactly how many tricks you'll win each round.
- A standard 52-card deck with the jokers removed
- 3 to 7 players
- The Up and Down the River app to keep score
At the end of the game, the player with the most points wins. You earn points by correctly predicting exactly how many tricks you'll win each round. Only an exact match scores — too many or too few and you get nothing.
Each turn, one player leads by playing a card face up on the table. Going around, everyone else plays one card each. Whoever played the highest card wins the trick and collects all the cards. The winner then leads the next turn. Winning tricks is the whole game.
At the start of the game the dealer turns over the top card of the remaining deck after dealing. Whatever suit that card is becomes the trump suit for the entire game.
Trump is powerful — a trump card beats any non-trump card, no matter how high. If hearts are trump, even a 2 of hearts beats an ace of spades.
The game always plays in both directions. It starts with just 1 card dealt to each player, increases by one card each round up to a maximum, then comes back down to 1 again.
The maximum cards per round depends on the number of players — the deck must divide evenly with no cards left over. With the default settings and 5 or fewer players, you'll play 19 rounds total.
The dealer deals everyone their cards. The dealer role rotates to the left every round.
In round 1 only, after dealing, the dealer turns over the top card of the remaining deck and reports the suit in the app. That suit is trump for the whole game.
Everyone looks at their hand and decides how many tricks they think they'll win this round — this is your bid. Bidding 0 is completely valid and can be a great strategy.
- Bidding starts with the player to the left of the dealer
- Each player states their bid out loud and enters it in the app
- The dealer bids last — with one important restriction:
The dealer cannot bid a number that would make everyone's total bids add up exactly to the number of tricks available. This guarantees that at least one player will always be wrong, keeping every round competitive.
Play out the hand physically. The rules for playing cards are:
- The player to the dealer's left plays the first card
- You must follow suit if you have a card in that suit
- If you don't have that suit, you may play any card — including trump
- The highest card of the suit that was led wins the trick
- Unless someone played a trump card — then the highest trump wins
- The winner of each trick leads the next one
After the hand is done, count up your tricks and enter the number in the app. The scoreboard updates instantly.
Only an exact bid scores points. There is no partial credit.
| Result | Points |
|---|---|
| Exact bid ✓ | 10 + bid |
| Wrong by any amount | 0 |
Examples:
| Bid | Made | Score |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | 3 | +13 |
| 0 | 0 | +10 |
| 5 | 5 | +15 |
| 3 | 2 | 0 |
| 3 | 4 | 0 |
Bidding 0 and making 0 is a perfectly valid strategy — and it scores 10 points!
In the final round everyone only gets 1 card. This round has no trump — the app sets this automatically and skips the trump step.
After all rounds are played, the player with the most points wins. The TV scoreboard tracks everyone's running score in real time so you always know where you stand.
These can be adjusted before the game starts. The defaults are listed first.
Trump mode — Once per game / New each round By default, trump is chosen once in round 1 and stays the same for the entire game. Switch to "New each round" if you'd prefer a fresh trump suit revealed at the start of every round.
Start direction — Low first / High first By default the game starts at 1 card and builds up to the maximum before coming back down (1→max→1). Switch to "High first" to start at the maximum and count down to 1 before coming back up (max→1→max). Either way, you always play both directions.
Max cards per player — default 10 Sets the ceiling on how many cards are dealt in the biggest round. Lower it for a shorter game. The actual maximum may be lower if the deck doesn't divide evenly among all players.
Number of decks — 1 or 2 Play with two decks to allow more cards per round with larger groups. With two decks, duplicate cards can appear in the same hand.