A four-player partnership game on a 32-card deck, where the Jack outranks the Ace, the trump suit stays secret until somebody dares to ask, and the entire hand is worth exactly twenty-nine points.
Twenty-Nine is played across the Indian subcontinent and it is the sharpest partnership game in this collection. You and the player opposite are a team; one side commits to a number before seeing most of its cards, and then has to get there. Two things make it unlike anything else here: the card ranking is upside down, and the trump is hidden.
Thirty-two cards — 7, 8, 9, 10, J, Q, K, A in each suit. Everything below 7 is out. The ranking is where new players lose hands:
| Strongest first | Points |
|---|---|
| J — Jack, the highest card in the game | 3 |
| 9 — second highest | 2 |
| A | 1 |
| 10 | 1 |
| K | 0 |
| Q | 0 |
| 8 | 0 |
| 7 — the lowest | 0 |
Jack beats nine beats ace beats ten beats king beats queen beats eight beats seven. A king takes nothing and is worth nothing; a nine wins tricks and carries two points.
Four suits × 7 points each = 28 in the cards, plus 1 for taking the last trick = 29. Every hand is worth exactly that, which is what makes counting possible.
Four cards are dealt to everyone first. On those four cards — half a hand — the bidding happens. Bids run from 16 to 28, and a bid is a promise that your side will take at least that many of the twenty-nine points. The remaining four cards are dealt afterwards, so you are committing on incomplete information by design.
The winning bidder chooses the trump suit — and does not announce it. It is set face down.
This is the rule that gives Twenty-Nine its character. The trump suit exists from the moment it is chosen, but it does nothing until it is revealed: until then the highest card of the suit led wins the trick, trumps included, as if there were no trump at all.
Any player who cannot follow suit may ask for the trump to be revealed. Once it is out, it is out for everyone for the rest of the hand, and trumps beat the led suit normally.
So revealing is a decision with a price. Ask early and you get your ruffs, but you also hand the bidding side the information they need. Sit on it and you may watch points you could have taken go past.
If all eight tricks are played and nobody ever asked, there was no contract in force to make or miss. Neither side's score moves.
Holding both the King and the Queen of the trump suit is worth four, and only one player at the table can ever have it.
Both are clamped to the legal range of 16–28. And there is a catch worth understanding: you must still be holding both when the trump becomes known. A king or a queen is a useful card, and spending one while the suit is still secret might be spending four points you did not know you had.
Hands are not scored in card points — those only decide whether the contract was made. What moves is game points.
| Outcome | Game points |
|---|---|
| Bidding side reached its requirement | +1 to them |
| Bidding side fell short | −1 to them |
| Doubled or redoubled | the same, multiplied |
| One side took all eight tricks | 2 extra, either way |
| Trump never revealed | nothing — the hand did not count |
The sweep bonus scales with the double rather than replacing it: 1 becomes 3, a doubled 2 becomes 4, a redoubled 4 becomes 6. And it cuts both ways — the defenders taking all eight costs the bidding side the same two extra.
A bidder may declare a single hand and play without their partner's help. It is worth 3 game points — and costs 3 if it fails. A single hand has no trump at all, and to make it the bidder must take all eight tricks personally; a partner winning one is not enough.
The default is a race to 6 game points — which also ends if the other side drops to −6, so the number of hands is not fixed. A host can instead set exactly 8, 12 or 16 hands, after which whichever side is ahead wins.
Five of the twenty-eight card points sit in the jack and nine of a single suit. Two jacks in a four-card hand is a real bid; two aces is barely a third of the same value and wins fewer tricks.
If you have K and Q of a suit you are thinking of naming trump, that is four points of contract relief — but only if you still have both when the trump comes out. Do not spend either one early to win a trick you did not need.
Revealing is free information for the bidding side. Do it in a trick where the ruff actually collects points, not on a trick worth nothing.
The total never changes, so arithmetic is available all hand. If a bid of 20 is in force and the defenders have taken 10, the bidders need 19 of the remaining 19 — which tells you exactly how hard to fight for the last trick, and that the last trick's single point is often the whole hand.
Twenty-Nine is a partnership game, so both winners take the full win and both losers take nothing — there is no second place to come, and the usual top-half table never applies.
| Finish | Points |
|---|---|
| Each player on the winning pair | 3 |
| Each player on the losing pair | 0 |
Leaving a match before it ends counts as a loss, so quitting a hand you are behind in does not get you out of it — and in a partnership game it takes your partner down with you.