Gamehelpohseven

Players and materials

Oh-Seven is a 30-minute trick-taking game for 2 to 9 players. (Specifically, it's a variant of Oh, Hell!)

Oh-Seven uses one or two decks of 32 cards, numbered 0–7 in four suits. (With standard playing cards, use Q to represent 0.) Five or more players must use two decks. Also needed are either pen and paper or score tokens to track bids and scores.

Overview

The object of the game is to score points. At the start of each of seven rounds, each of which consists of seven tricks, each player bids the number of tricks they intend to take. At the end of each round, each player who matched their bid exactly gains points equal to their bid plus two; each player who missed loses points equal to how many too high or too low they bid.

Deal

At the start of each round, shuffle the deck and deal each player seven cards.

Bidding

Each player chooses a card from their hand and places it down in front of themself, facedown. Once each player has committed, the chosen cards are revealed. The number on each card is the number of tricks the player is bidding to take.

The highest card bid determines the trump suit and the leader of the first trick for the round. The high card's suit becomes the trump suit. To break numeric ties, Spades beat Hearts beat Diamonds beat Clubs. (With two decks, if two players bid the same card, a rebid is forced, described at the end of this section.)

Record the bids, then return the cards to their players' hands for use in play. (With standard playing cards, set the Kings aside and flip the appropriate one to indicate the current trump suit.)

If the bids sum to 7, then rather than permit the possibility that everyone gets what they want, a rebid is forced, as follows. First, whoever bid the high card immediately scores one point. (With two decks, if two players bid the same high card, they each score one point.) Then the players bid again, using the remaining cards in their hands. The new bids replace the previous bids. Repeat until the bids don't sum to 7. If the players run out of cards, redeal (but players keep their bonus points).

Play

The player with the lead plays any card from their hand. The other players then play in clockwise order. They MUST follow the lead if possible, by matching the suit of the lead card. If they have no cards of that suit, then they may play any card from their hand.

After each player has played a card, the winner of the trick is whoever played the highest trump card, if any, else whoever played the highest card of the lead suit. (With two decks, if there is a tie with the same card, the one played first beats the one played second.)

The winner of the trick takes the cards and piles them facedown in front of themself, then leads the next trick. Continue until all seven tricks are taken.

Scoring

Each player who matched their bid exactly gains points equal to their bid plus two; each player who missed loses points equal to how many too high or too low they bid.

Card-passing variant (not implemented on BGA)

Before the bidding, each player looks at their cards and passes some to a neighbor. The cards are passed simultaneously and facedown. Players may only look at the cards they're receiving after deciding which cards they're passing.

• No passing in round 1.
• In round 2, pass 1 left.
• In round 3, pass 2 right.
• In round 4, pass 3 left.
• In round 5, pass 2 right.
• In round 6, pass 1 left.
• No passing in round 7.