Callbreak

Say how many tricks you will take, then take exactly that many. Spades are always trump, and the round is lost as easily by taking too many as by taking too few.

Callbreak is a bidding trick-taking game, and the bid is the whole game. You look at a freshly dealt hand, decide how many of its tricks you can win, and say the number out loud. Make it and you score it. Miss it and you lose it — and the tricks you did take count for nothing at all.

It is close cousin to Spades, but the scoring is harsher and the play is tighter, because there is a ceiling as well as a floor.

The deal

Three to five players. The deck is trimmed with low diamonds and clubs when it has to divide evenly, and the number of cards you hold is also the number of tricks in the round — and the highest call anybody may make.

A match runs 5, 9 or 13 rounds, chosen when the table is made. Five is the standard game and the quickest way to a result; nine is long enough to come back from one bad call; thirteen is the marathon. Highest total at the end wins.

Calling

Before a card is played, every player calls a number — the tricks they commit to winning. Calls are made in turn and everybody sees them, so a late caller knows how much of the round is already spoken for.

The minimum call depends on the ruleset the host picked, and the maximum is always the number of tricks in the round.

Two rulesets, and the difference is real

Official is the printed game. Custom is how most tables actually play, and the difference is not cosmetic: being allowed to duck with a low card changes every hand where you are sitting on your call and want no more tricks. Under official rules, holding the ace of the suit led means playing it, whether you want the trick or not.

Playing a trick

Spades are trump, permanently. There is no "broken" state as there is in Hearts — a spade may be led from the very first trick. Four rules, in the order they are asked:

1. On lead, play anything. Nothing is constrained.
2. Holding the led suit, you must play it — and under official rules you must beat the highest one already down if you can. The exception: if somebody has already trumped, the trick is gone, so there is no sense burning an ace to lose it and following is all that is asked.
3. Void in the led suit and holding spades, you must trump — and if a spade is already down, you must overtrump. If you cannot overtrump, you are not forced to spend a low spade, because it wins nothing a discard would not.
4. Void with no spades, play anything.

Scoring

That last row is what makes Callbreak its own game. Call 4 and you must finish on 4 or 5. Six is scored as if you had taken two. There is a ceiling as well as a floor, and both cost the same.

It changes the endgame completely. A player sitting on their call plus one can no longer take a trick they do not want, so dumping winners late stops being sloppy play and becomes the only correct play. And a player who is short will hunt tricks from anybody — which is where the overtrick you are allowed quietly becomes worth something.

Strategy that actually pays

Count your certainties, then stop

A call is a promise, and the punishment for breaking it is symmetric. Count the tricks you will win whatever happens — the ace and king of trumps, a long spade suit, side aces — and call that. Hopeful tricks are what turn +4 into −4.

Small trumps are an asset, not a liability

Because you must ruff when void, low spades get spent, not wasted. A hand with four small spades and a short side suit will take more tricks than its face value suggests. Count the voids you can create, not just the honours you hold.

Watch what is left uncalled

The calls are public. Add them up: if the table has called eleven of thirteen, two tricks are floating and somebody is about to overshoot. If the table has called fifteen of thirteen, at least two players are going to break, and your job is to make sure it is not you.

Under official rules, plan around being forced

Holding A♥ when hearts are led means playing it. If you are already on your call, that ace is a liability, and the time to get rid of it is before somebody leads the suit — not after.

What a finished match is worth on the leaderboard

Only the result counts — never the score inside the game — so a one-point win pays what a landslide does. The size of the table is what changes the value of a win.

Half is rounded up, so an odd table splits your way: at five players, second and third both score. Two boards are kept, this week and all time — three matches to appear on the weekly one, five on all time.