Auction · Trick-taking · 4 players
Bid for the contract, call an unseen partner, and navigate a remarkable order of trumps. Play this historical four-player game against three bots.
Auction
Trick 1 of 10
Your bid
Choose the trump suit
Four people play individually or form a temporary partnership. This online table includes you and three bots.
Use a 40-card French-suited deck: A, K, Q, J, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3 and 2 in each suit. Deal ten cards to each player, traditionally in packets of four, three and three. The player to the dealer's right bids first; bidding and play move to the right.
Pass or bid Alliance, Solo or Vole. Each new bid must be higher. Alliance aims to win at least six of ten tricks with a partner; Solo aims to win six alone; Vole promises all ten alone. A passer cannot re-enter the auction. If all pass, the holder of Spadille (A♠) must play an Alliance called Forced Spadille.
The Alliance bidder chooses trumps and calls a King of a different suit that they do not hold. If they hold all three available Kings, they call an eligible Queen. In the exceptionally rare case that every eligible Queen is also in the bidder's hand, this table continues down the card ranks until it finds a card another player holds. The holder becomes their partner, revealed when the called card appears. Solo and Vole bidders play alone.
Spadille (A♠) is the highest trump, followed by Manille (2 of trumps if trumps are black, 7 of trumps if red), then Basto (A♣). Spadille and Basto count as trumps even when spades and clubs are not the chosen suit. In a red suit, its Ace is the fourth trump, called Punto.
After the matadors, a black trump suit runs K, Q, J, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3. Red trumps run A, K, Q, J, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. An ordinary black suit runs K, Q, J, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2; an ordinary red suit runs K, Q, J, A, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.
Follow the led suit if you can. Otherwise play any card. The highest trump wins; if none is played, the highest card of the led suit wins. The winner leads next. Matadors have a special privilege: if a trump is led and you hold only matadors as trumps, you may play another suit rather than sacrifice one, except when a higher matador leads and you hold a lower one.
After ten tricks, the online table records which side made the bid and counts deals won. An Alliance side combines both partners' tricks. Five tricks is a remise; four or fewer is a codille. Historical Quadrille also used pools, counters, bonuses and payments between players. Those payments are described below but are not simulated here.
Quadrille emerged in early eighteenth-century France from the three-player game Ombre. It became fashionable in Britain and elsewhere during the eighteenth century. The called King creates a temporary partnership whose identity may stay hidden for several tricks.
Historically, a player entered stakes in a pool and used counters to settle wins, remises and codilles. Bonuses could reward the matadors, the first five tricks or a vole. This playable version focuses on the auction, card order and trick play, using deals won as a simple running record.
Tables differed in the order and value of bids and in how they handled the all-pass hand. Médiateur, a later variant, let a Solo bidder call for help from another player. Other local rules changed the exact tariff for a Vole or the treatment of a remise.
Before playing with physical cards, agree on a version of the auction, the all-pass rule and the counter payments. The rules above describe the version used by this online table.