Tarabish Rules
A bid for half the points, a kitty of three, and a Jack worth more than an Ace
Tarabish is not playable yet Coming Soon
There's no table for it, no engine behind it, and nothing in the lobby's create-a-room menu for it. It's a name on the "Games" list and nothing more, for now.
These are the rules as commonly played — not this table's rules yet
Tarabish belongs to the same close family of trick-taking, partnership, bid-and-make-it games as Auction 45s and 120s, and it is played with just as much local variation. What's below is the game the way it's commonly described — it is not a description of anything this site deals, because this site doesn't deal it at all yet.
Shannon has already overruled a published source on 120s more than once because his own family plays a hand a little differently, so before a single card of Tarabish gets dealt on NewfieCards, the house rules NewfieCards will use are still Shannon's to settle — treat everything on this page as a starting point, not a promise of how it will play here.
Objective
Bid for the right to name trumps, then have your side take more than half the points in the hand. Fall short and the whole hand's points go to the other side instead — commonly called going "bate."
Players and the Deck
- Four players in two fixed partnerships, seated across from their partner, is the usual game; two or three players competing individually is also played.
- A shortened deck: 6 through Ace of each suit, thirty-six cards in all (the 2s through 5s are set aside). At two or three players the deck is trimmed further still.
- Dealt in threes: six cards to each player to bid on, and a face-down kitty of three that stays hidden until the bidding is over and trumps are named.
Bidding
The player to the dealer's left bids first, and the bid passes round the table until somebody names a suit or everybody passes — at which point the dealer is commonly obliged to name trumps rather than let the hand go unplayed. Whoever wins the bid takes the three-card kitty into their hand before naming trumps.
Trump Ranking and Card Points
| Card | Points in trumps | Points otherwise |
|---|---|---|
| Jack | 11 (highest trump) | 0 |
| 9 | 9 (second-highest trump) | 0 |
| Ace | 15 (highest card by value, but ranks below the trump 9) | 6 |
| King | 4 | 4 |
| Queen | 3 | 3 |
| 10 | 10 | 10 |
| 8, 7, 6 | 0 | 0 |
162 points sit in the deck across the hand once the last-trick bonus is counted. The trump Jack and 9 outrank even the Ace, which is the single thing every new player at a Tarabish table gets wrong first.
Scoring a Hand
The bidding side needs more than half the points in play — 82 or more of the 162 — to make its bid. Make it, and the side scores what it won. Fall short, and it's a bate: the whole hand's points go to the other side instead, whatever either side actually took in tricks. Exactly half is commonly its own case — a "half-bate" — and scores the bidding side nothing at all.
Winning
A game commonly runs to 500 points. That, like everything above, is Shannon's to decide for this table when the time comes.
Tarabish isn't in the lobby yet, but four other games are. Create a free account and go to the Game Lobby to play one of them.