Tarot Whist

Like Tarot? Like Whist? You'll love Tarot Whist!. A free to play card game against AI opponents using the Rider-Waite tarot deck.


The game is a close variation on Contract Whist, Oh Hell, Oh Pshaw, Nomination Whist, Up the River, Up and down the River, Vanishing Whist, Hell Yeah!, Get Fred, Gary's Game, Diminishing Bridge, Blackout, German Bridge in Hong Kong.

The tarot deck consists of 4 suits: pentacles, cups, swords and wands. The suits are similar to a standard playing card deck of spades, hearts, clubs and diamonds except the jacks are replaced by pages and knights where the knight is ranked higher than the page. Aces are high. The deck has a suit of overtrumps or major arcana which are numbered 1 to 21 in roman numerals which beat any of the standard cards. There is a fool card numbered 0 which always wins.

Play consists of 2 phases:

Bidding Phase:
The bidding phase is where each player selects the number of tricks they think they are going to win in that hand. You select your bid by use of the bid buttons. The last player to bid cannot bid to make the total bids equal the number of cards in the hand. This is so that not all players are able to win as many tricks as bid. The number bid represents the EXACT number of tricks that player thinks they will win not the lowest number of tricks they think they will win.


Play Phase:
The play phase starts with the player to dealer's left selecting any card from their hand. Each player then follows by playing a card of the same suit if possible with the highest card winning the trick. If a player has no cards of the same suit they may either discard an unwanted card or play a trump or overtrump. The trump suit is indicated in a box to the top-right of screen. Trumps have the effect of beating the suit led and once one is played the highest trump wins the trick. If a major arcana (overtrump) card is played this beats the standard trump suit. The trick winner then starts the next trick by again selecting any card from their hand. If "NT" is displayed in the Trumps area there are no trumps in this hand. Trumps are determined by turning the top card after the deal with a major arcana card indicating no trumps. If all cards are dealt then no trumps is used except for the "Maximum" game type when the trumps cycle through the suits

Scoring:
After the hand is finished each player is given 1 point for every trick they won and an additional 10 points if they won as many tricks as they bid. The score-sheet is displayed with the number of cards in the hand in the furthest left column " and the players' scores so far in the remaining columns.