🔮 Oh Heck
7 playsOh Heck
Say exactly how many tricks you will take, then take that many and not one more.
About Oh Heck
Oh Heck — known in rougher company by a stronger name — is a trick-taking game in which winning tricks is not the point; predicting them is. You sit at a table of four with Fox, Owl and Bear, and over thirteen rounds the hands shrink from seven cards down to one and grow back to seven again. Each round a card is turned to name trump, and every player bids the exact number of tricks they expect to take. The dealer bids last and is forbidden the one number that would make the bids add up to the tricks available, so somebody must always come up short. Hit your bid on the nose and you score ten plus the bid; miss it by any margin, over or under, and the round is worth nothing. The opponents play at three levels, from Easy to Hard.
How to Play
Bid exactly how many tricks you expect to win. The dealer may not bid the number that makes the total of bids equal the tricks in the hand. Follow the led suit if you can. The highest trump wins the trick, otherwise the highest card of the suit led; the winner leads next. Make your bid exactly for 10 points plus the bid; miss by any amount for 0. Hands run 7 down to 1 and back to 7, and the highest total after 13 rounds wins.
💡 Tips & Strategy
Bid what your hand will take, not what it might. Aces and high trumps are near-certain tricks; a king is worth a trick only when its ace has gone or when you hold enough cards in the suit to wait it out; queens and below rarely win anything except in trumps or when a suit has run dry around the table. Count your sure winners first, add a half for each likely one, and round towards the cautious side — with four players and a hand of seven, plenty of good-looking cards are trumped or overtaken.
The small hands are a different game. With one, two or three cards there is little room to adjust, so a single ace or high trump is usually a trick and almost nothing else is. A bid of zero is often the soundest call of the round: it scores 10 when made, exactly as much as most other bids, and a hand of low cards in short suits makes it far more often than it fails.
In play, steer towards your number rather than simply taking tricks. Once you have made your bid, every further trick costs you the whole round, so shed your high cards into tricks someone else is already winning and follow with your lowest card wherever you can. If you are short, lead your strongest suit early, before Fox, Owl and Bear run out of it and start trumping. Watch their bids as closely as their cards: a player who needs one more trick will fight for it, and a player who has already made theirs will be ducking.
Use the dealer's rule to your advantage. The dealer may not bid the number that would make the bids add up to the tricks available, so someone always falls short; when you deal, that restriction can force you into an awkward bid, and when you do not, it guarantees that the table as a whole is over- or under-bid. Notice which, because it tells you whether the tricks will be fought over or spare — and with ten plus the bid for an exact hit and nothing at all for a miss, accuracy over thirteen rounds beats ambition every time.