Belote

Game rules

Belote is believed to have originated in France, although there is no concrete proof. Nevertheless, the game is most popular in France, where it is sometimes nearly considered a national sport, similar to Jass in Switzerland. There are quite notable differences with Jass but the two games are still considered to be similar.

The objective is simply to get points by judiciously playing your cards. It is played in two teams of two players with a deck of 32 standard French cards and is organized in rounds of 8 tricks.

Course of the game

Players make two teams of two and place themselves on the table so that the turns of each team alternate.
At the beginning of the round, dealing goes in two steps.

  1. The dealer deals 5 cards to each player, by groups of 2 and then 3 or 3 and then 2.
  2. The dealer turns the next undealt card and shows it to everybody. This card is proposed as trump suit for the first round of the bidding phase (see below).
  3. At the end of the bidding phase, once the contract to be played is determined, the dealing of the remaining cards (3 for each player) continues starting with the taker. That player will thus have the card previously shown in his hand.
  4. Then, once all cards have been dealt, the card play can start.

At the end of the round, points are counted and the player to the left of the current dealer becomes the dealer for the next round.

Bidding and contracts

After the first deal, when each player has 5 cards in their hand, the next undealt card is returned and proposed as trump suit.

At their turn starting with the player after the dealer, each player can choose whether to take or pass.
The player who decides to take chooses the trump suit and obliges their team to make at least 82 points.
During the first turn, the trump suit must be the suit of the returned card. If nobody takes at first turn, another suit can be chosen as trump but then, it's no longer allowed to choose the suit of the returned card.
If nobody takes after the second turn, the cards are collected, shuffled and dealt by the next dealer.
According to standard rule, the player who takes makes the bidding phase end and the second part of the deal restarts with that player (it isn't possible to overbid). They then engage their team to make at least 82 points.

Card play

On their turn, the player must:

When everybody has played their card, the player who put the strongest one wins the trick. The strongest card is defined by:

Belote and rebelote

If a player owns the king and the queen of trump, their team can obtain 20 bonus points. To get them, they must announce "belote" when playing the king, and "rebelote" when playing the queen, just after having played the corresponding card but before the next player plays.
The king and the queen must be played in that order; playing the queen and then the king doesn't give the bonus.
Of course, the bonus is lost when forgetting one of the two announcements.

Card values

For trump cards, the order and value are as follows:

For non-trump cards, the order and value are the following:

Be careful about the particularity of the 10, which is placed just after the ace and thus wins against other face cards.

Last trick is worth 10 points. A round counts exactly 162 points. A complete belote game is often played to 1000 points.

Scoring

At the end of the round, three cases are possible:

A match, which means earning 162 points by taking all the tricks, gives a bonus of 90 points, making a total of 252 points.

The 20 points for belote and rebelote are always counted for the team which made them, independently of the result of the contract. They can help avoid a failure or a tie and are never carried over to the next round.

Belote coinchée

In this variant, the bidding procedure is enriched. On their turn, the player who decides to take must announce a number of points in addition to the trump suit.
They oblige their team to score at least that number of points. If the announced score isn't reached, or if the opposing team scores more points, the contract is failed and the other team gets 162 points.

It is allowed, and even encouraged to overbid and to counter. The minimum bid is 80, and can raise up to 160 in increments of 10.
Countering definitely sets the trump suit and the number of points to reach, and has the effect of doubling the score counted at the end of the round, regardless of if the contract succeeded or failed.
After countering, it is no longer allowed to overbid, but it's still allowed to overcounter, which doubles the scores again at the end of the round (they will therefore be multiplied by 4).

During the bidding phase, at your turn, you thus have the following options:

The bidding phase ends when three players passed in succession.

In general, when playing with this Belote variant, cards are all dealt in one go, and no longer in two steps as in the standard version.
On the Playroom, traditional two steps deal can be enabled or not independently from activating the countered/coinche variant.

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