Belote

Game rules

Belote is believed to have originated in France, although there is no concrete proof. Nevertheless, the game is most popular in France, where it is sometimes nearly considered a national sport, similar to Jass in Switzerland. There are quite notable differences with Jass but the two games are still considered to be similar.

The objective is simply to get points by judiciously playing your cards. It is played in two teams of two players with a deck of 32 standard French cards and is organized in rounds of 8 tricks.

Course of the game

Players make two teams of two and place themselves on the table so that the turns of each team alternate.
At the beginning of the round, dealing goes in two steps.

  1. The dealer deals 5 cards to each player, by groups of 2 and then 3 or 3 and then 2.
  2. The dealer turns the next undealt card and shows it to everybody. This card is proposed as trump suit for the first round of the bidding phase (see below).
  3. At the end of the bidding phase, once the contract to be played is determined, the dealing of the remaining cards (3 for each player) continues starting with the taker. That player will thus have the card previously shown in his hand.
  4. Then, once all cards have been dealt, the card play can start.

At the end of the round, points are counted and the player to the left of the current dealer becomes the dealer for the next round.

Bidding and contracts

After the first deal, when each player has 5 cards in their hand, the next undealt card is returned and proposed as trump suit.

At their turn starting with the player after the dealer, each player can choose whether to take or pass.
The player who decides to take chooses the trump suit and obliges their team to make at least a certain number of points.
During the first turn, the trump suit must be the suit of the returned card. If nobody takes at first turn, another suit can be chosen as trump but then it's no longer allowed to choose the suit of the returned card.
If nobody takes after the second turn, the cards are collected, shuffled and dealt by the next dealer.

According to the basic rule, the player who takes makes the bidding phase end and the second part of the deal restarts with that player (it isn't possible to overbid). They then oblige their team to make at least 82 points.
There exist a number of variants allowing and even encouraging overbidding: belote countered, coinched, etc. where a number of points is announced in addition to a trump suit. These variants aren't available on the Playroom yet.

Card play

On their turn, the player must:

When everybody has played their card, the player who put the strongest one wins the trick. The strongest card is defined by:

Belote and rebelote

If a player owns the king and the queen of trump, their team can obtain 20 bonus points. To get them, they must announce "belote" when playing the king, and "rebelote" when playing the queen, just after having played the corresponding card but before the next player plays.
The king and the queen must be played in that order; playing the queen and then the king doesn't give the bonus.
Of course, the bonus is lost when forgetting one of the two announcements.

Card values

For trump cards, the order and value are as follows:

For non-trump cards, the order and value are the following:

Be careful about the particularity of the 10, which is placed just after the ace and thus wins against other face cards.

Last trick is worth 10 points. A round counts exactly 162 points. A complete belote game is often played to 1000 points.

Scoring

At the end of the round, three cases are possible:

A match, which means earning 162 points by taking all the tricks, gives a bonus of 90 points, making a total of 252 points.

The 20 points for belote and rebelote are always counted for the team which made them, independently of the result of the contract. They can help avoid a failure or a tie and are never carried over to the next round.

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