120s (Auction) Rules

120s is a partnership trick-taking game. You and the player opposite you play as a side, and you're trying to win tricks — every trick is worth points, and one trick in each hand is worth double. Before a hand is played, one side bids for the right to name the trump suit, and takes on the risk of falling short.

The first side to reach 120 points wins the game. That's where the name comes from.

• Players: exactly 4. Not two, not six — the game doesn't work with any other number and the table won't deal one.
• Partnerships: two fixed sides of two. Partners sit opposite each other, so the turn alternates between the sides right round the table.
• Scores are kept by side, not by player. You and your partner have one score between you, and it's the side that reaches 120, not a person.
• Deck: a standard 52-card pack. There are no jokers and nothing is stripped out.

• Everyone gets 5 cards, dealt five at a time — one packet of five to each player rather than one card at a time round the table.
• The rest of the pack stays face down on the table. It isn't dead: it's what the discard draws from later.
• The deal passes one seat to the left after every hand that gets played out.

1. There is one round of bidding, starting with the player to the dealer's left and going once round the table. The dealer bids last, which is worth something — they've heard everyone else first.
2. There are only two bids: 15 or 30. There's nothing in between and nothing above.
3. A bid has to beat the bid standing, so once someone has said 15 the only thing left to say is 30, and once someone has said 30 everybody after them passes.
4. You can always pass. Nobody is ever forced to bid, including the dealer.
5. The high bidder names the trump suit.
6. Know what you're bidding for. There are only 30 points in a hand, so a bid of 30 is a bid to take every single trick — miss one and you're set. A bid of 15 is half of them: three ordinary tricks, or two if one of the two is the 10-point one.

The high bidder names a trump suit. Then, and this is the part people forget, everybody gets to improve their hand.

1. Each player throws away any number of their five cards — none, one, all five, whatever they like — and the dealer deals them back up to five from the rest of the pack.
2. Players do this one at a time, starting with the player to the dealer's left and finishing with the dealer, the same way round as the deal and the bidding.
3. Throwing nothing is a perfectly good move, and it's the usual one when you're already holding trumps.

The high bidder leads to the first trick — not the player to their left, and not whoever discarded last. The bidder bought the right to set the trump suit and to start the hand.

Below those three, the trump suit runs in its own order — and here's the rule nobody gets right first time: after the Queen, the little cards run the other way round in red than they do in black. In a black trump suit the 2 is the highest of them and the 10 the lowest; in a red trump suit the 10 is the highest and the 2 the lowest. (The 5 isn't in either list, because it's already the top trump.)

A suit that isn't trumps runs Ace, King, Queen, Jack and then the little cards — and the little cards flip by colour again: low-to-high in black, high-to-low in red.

1. The high bidder leads to the first trick; after that, whoever won the last trick leads the next.
2. Play goes round the table, one card each, four cards to a trick, five tricks to a hand.
3. Any trump beats any non-trump. Among trumps, the higher trump wins.
4. If no trump is played, the highest card of the suit that was led wins. A card of any other suit can't win the trick at all, however big it looks.

Cards have no point values in 120s. Points come from tricks and from nothing else.

• Every trick is worth 5 points to the side that wins it…
• …except one: the trick taken by the highest card that actually wins a trick that hand is worth 10 instead of 5. That's usually the 5 of trumps — but not always, and it isn't hardcoded: if the 5 was never dealt to anybody, the 10 goes to whichever winning card was highest, and in the very rare hand where no trump wins a trick at all it goes to the highest plain card that won one.
• So there are exactly 30 points in every hand: four tricks at 5 and one at 10.

• Hands are dealt one after another, and the side scores add up as you go.
• The first side to reach 120 at the end of a hand wins. Scores are only checked when a hand finishes, so nobody wins in the middle of one.
• If both sides go past 120 in the same hand, the side that bid wins — even if the other side finished with more points. They took the risk; they get the game.

• Count the top three — the 5, the Jack and the Ace of hearts. Once you know where they are, you know how the hand is going.
• Bidding 15 is the ordinary bid. Bidding 30 is bidding to take all five tricks, and being set costs you the whole 30 — it wants a hand you can see every trick in.
• Don't waste the discard. Everyone at the table is improving their hand, not just you — a hand that looked strong before the discard often isn't afterwards.
• Leading a low trump smokes out the top three, but remember they can be held back against it. That's exactly what reneging is for.
• You may trump a plain suit you could have followed. Doing it early can win you a trick your partner would otherwise have had to spend a trump on.
• The 10-point trick is worth two ordinary ones. If you hold the highest trump, think hard about when to spend it.
• Watch the colour of the trump suit. If you play red and black trumps the same way round, you will lose tricks you didn't need to.