Wizard Rules — How to Play and Keep Score
Wizard is the polished commercial version of Oh Hell. It uses a 60-card deck: the usual 52 cards plus four Wizards, which beat everything, and four Jesters, which lose to everything. Before each hand every player predicts exactly how many tricks they will take, and the whole game turns on being right rather than on winning as much as possible. Taking one trick too many is punished as hard as taking one too few.
Overview
Wizard is the polished commercial version of Oh Hell. It uses a 60-card deck: the usual 52 cards plus four Wizards, which beat everything, and four Jesters, which lose to everything. Before each hand every player predicts exactly how many tricks they will take, and the whole game turns on being right rather than on winning as much as possible. Taking one trick too many is punished as hard as taking one too few.
Setup
Round one deals a single card to each player and every following round adds one more, so with four players the game runs from a one-card hand up to a fifteen-card hand. After dealing, the top card of what remains is turned over to set trump; if it is a Wizard the dealer names the trump suit, and if it is a Jester the hand is played without trump. In the final round the whole deck has been dealt, so there is no card to turn and no trump.
How to play
Starting to the dealer's left, each player states a bid from zero up to the number of cards in their hand. Bids are announced out loud and written down before a card is played, and every player is free to bid whatever they like unless screw-the-dealer is switched on.
The player to the dealer's left leads. Players must follow the suit led if they can. A Wizard or a Jester can be played at any time regardless of suit. The trick is won by the first Wizard played; if there is none, by the highest trump; if there is no trump either, by the highest card of the suit led. If all four cards are Jesters, the first Jester played wins. Whoever wins the trick leads the next one.
Scoring
At the end of a hand, compare each player's bid with the tricks they actually took.
Exact. The player scores a flat 20 plus 10 for every trick taken. Bidding two and taking two scores 20 + 20 = 40. Bidding five and taking five scores 20 + 50 = 70. Bidding zero and taking none scores 20 plus nothing, so 20 flat.
Wrong. The player loses 10 for every trick they were away from the bid, in either direction. Bidding three and taking one loses 20. Bidding one and taking three also loses 20. Tricks taken earn nothing at all on a missed bid.
Bids across the table do not have to add up to the number of tricks available, and usually will not. Scores go negative freely, especially in the early short hands.
Ending the game
The game ends after the last round, when the deck has been fully dealt or the chosen round count is reached. Totals are added up and the highest wins. If the perfect-game bonus is switched on, add it now for anyone who bid correctly in every single round.
Common variations
Some groups play a Jester led means the next card sets the suit to follow. Others hand out a bonus for a correct bid in the final round, or dock the dealer for a hand where the bids balance perfectly.
Scoring at a glance
| Who wins | Highest score |
|---|---|
| Score sheet | A bid and a result per player per round; the score is derived |
| Typical round score | -60 – 100 |
| Negative scores | Possible |
| Worth knowing | Two inputs per player per round, a bid and a tricks-taken figure, both whole numbers between zero and the hand size. The round score is always derived, never typed. |
Wizard — score sheet
Worked example
Settings: roundMode: custom, customRoundCount: 5, exactBonus: 20,
pointsPerTrick: 10, missPenalty: 10, zeroBidScoring: flatBonus. Four
players: Anna, Ben, Cara, Dan. Hand sizes run one card up to five, so each
round's tricks taken add up to the round number.
| Round | Anna bid/took | Ben | Cara | Dan |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 / 1 → 30 | 0 / 0 → 20 | 0 / 0 → 20 | 1 / 0 → −10 |
| 2 | 1 / 0 → −10 | 1 / 1 → 30 | 0 / 1 → −10 | 2 / 0 → −20 |
| 3 | 2 / 2 → 40 | 0 / 0 → 20 | 1 / 1 → 30 | 1 / 0 → −10 |
| 4 | 1 / 2 → −10 | 2 / 2 → 40 | 0 / 0 → 20 | 1 / 0 → −10 |
| 5 | 2 / 2 → 40 | 1 / 1 → 30 | 3 / 1 → −20 | 0 / 1 → −10 |
| Total | 90 | 140 | 40 | −60 |
Expected standings: Ben 140, rank 1; Anna 90, rank 2; Cara 40, rank 3; Dan −60, rank 4.
Three things this is built to catch:
A made bid of zero pays the flat 20. Ben bid nothing in rounds 1 and 3 and took nothing, and both are worth 20 — the least rewarding correct bid in the game, but a long way from nothing. Scoring a made zero as 0 is the single most common way to get this family wrong, and it is invisible in every other row.
Overshooting is punished exactly as hard as falling short. Anna bid one in round 4 and took two. She lost 10, the same as if she had taken none, and the two tricks she actually won bought her nothing at all. Wizard has no consolation points: a missed bid scores the penalty and only the penalty, which is why Dan finishes 200 points behind Ben having played five perfectly ordinary hands.
Direction does not enter the arithmetic, only distance does. Dan's round 2 is −20 because he was two away, and it would be −20 for bidding zero and taking two just as much as for bidding two and taking none.
Switching zeroBidScoring to doubleBonus moves only the made-zero rows: Ben
goes to 180 and Cara to 80, while Anna stays on 90 because she never bid zero, and
Dan stays on −60 because his zero bid missed.
One thing this example cannot show is the end of the game. Wizard's round count lives in a setting the engine's ending check does not read, so a completed match reports its standings correctly and never reports itself as finished. The totals and the leader are right; the "match over" signal is missing.
House rules and settings
Every table plays Wizard a little differently. These are the 9 rules groups argue about. Each one is a setting in the app — and changing it recalculates a match that is already in progress, which is the thing no other score keeper does.
Number of rounds: what are the options in Wizard?
Playing the deck out gives 20 rounds with three players, 15 with four, 12 with five and 10 with six. Choose a fixed number if you want a shorter game.
Default: Deal out the whole deck. Two options:
In the app: “Number of rounds”.
Rounds to play: what is the default in Wizard?
How many rounds to play when you are not dealing the whole deck out. Round one deals one card each and every round adds another.
Default: 10. Adjustable from 1 to 20 in steps of 1.
In the app: “Rounds to play”.
Bonus for an exact bid: what is the default in Wizard?
The flat bonus a player gets for taking exactly the number of tricks they bid, before the per-trick points are added.
Default: 20. Adjustable from 0 to 50 in steps of 5.
In the app: “Bonus for an exact bid”.
Points per trick when correct: what is the default in Wizard?
What each trick is worth to a player who bid exactly right. It is added on top of the flat bonus.
Default: 10. Adjustable from 0 to 20 in steps of 5.
In the app: “Points per trick when correct”.
Penalty per trick missed by: what is the default in Wizard?
Subtracted for every trick a player is away from their bid, whether they took too many or too few. Only the size of the gap matters, not the direction.
Default: 10. Adjustable from 0 to 30 in steps of 5.
In the app: “Penalty per trick missed by”.
Made bid of zero: what are the options in Wizard?
What a player scores for correctly bidding no tricks. The standard rule gives them the flat bonus only, which makes zero bids the least rewarding correct bid in the game.
Default: Just the flat bonus (20). Three options:
In the app: “Made bid of zero”.
Screw the dealer: on or off in Wizard?
Stops the dealer, who bids last, from choosing a bid that would make every bid add up to exactly the number of tricks available. It guarantees at least one player has to miss.
Default: off.
In the app: “Screw the dealer”.
Bonus for bidding right every round: what is the default in Wizard?
An end-of-game reward for a player who never missed a single bid. Set it to 0 to turn the bonus off.
Default: 0. Adjustable from 0 to 100 in steps of 10.
In the app: “Bonus for bidding right every round”.
Tie-break: what are the options in Wizard?
How to settle two players finishing on the same total.
Default: Share the win. Three options:
In the app: “Tie-break”.
Variants of Wizard
No trump in the last round
In the final round the whole deck is dealt, so no card is left to turn for trump and the hand is played without one.
Wizard leads a suit
If a Wizard is led, the next player may play any card at all. Some groups instead require them to follow the suit of the next card played.
Wizard is also known as
Rufen, Oh Hell with Wizards. These are the same game — the rules and the score sheet above apply to all of them.
Keep score offline
The sheet above works in your browser. Cardzo for iPhone remembers your players, survives a closed tab, and works in a field with no signal.
Coming to the App Store.