Rules for Five Person 500 (card game)
December 29, 2008
500 is a classic trick-based card game that is simple to learn but can require years to master. The basic rules and history of this game are well-described at Wikipedia.
Here's one way to adjust gameplay to support 5 hands at the table:
- There are no partners. Every player is competing against every other player.
- Add the 2's and 3's back into the deck so the total is 53 cards. A trump suit will now contain 15 cards (Joker, Jick, and 2 through Ace).
- Deal 10 cards to each player, leaving 3 in the blind.
- Bidding starts to the left of the dealer, as usual.
- When a bid is won, the winning bidder selects one partner from among the other four players. If the bid is 8 or higher, the winning bidder selects two partners. The remaining players form a team against the winning bidder.
- When the hand is over, all players on a given team receive the traditional allotment of points, and then the teams reset.
Playing 5-handed 500 is much different from the usual version of 500. Often you are able to predict who will become partners during the bidding cycle (say two players are both bidding in Clubs), but often it is a coin flip as to who will become the third partner since the other players will have been bidding in competing suits. All players must pay constant attention to the scoreboard and position themselves appropriately. With only three cards in the blind, and the additional low cards (2's and 3's), it can be difficult to make your bid, even with additional partners. This means that aggressive players might go set often if they are not used to this alternative mode of play, and the winner of the game might be those players who rarely bid but who are pulling in a few points per hand.
Comments
GPM writes:
That is a good explanation of how it works!
John Carney writes:
Explanation not fully describing game. Do you call a card or a partner if you call 6 or 7 do you call one partner ???
Please advise
chris writes:
John, I'm not sure I fully understand your question, but I'll do my best to respond. If you win the bidding with a 6 or 7 bid, then you get to choose one partner. If you win with an 8, 9, or 10 bid then you choose two partners. Bidding itself starts to the left of the dealer. Each person has the opportunity to bid a suit plus the number of tricks he thinks he'll be able to take in the suit (for example, you could bid 8 Clubs, or 10 Hearts). The person with the highest bid gets to take on additional partners, and the trump suit becomes the suit that was in the winning bid. Hope this helps...
Ryan writes:
ok. there's no way that it can be the first player to 500 wins, because we just play where everyone deals once. so one round of dealing and that's the end of the game. highest score wins. we've had it where one person has like 1200 then the next person has 1160 and so on. we'd have 500 points after 2 hands. so we couldn't play like that. and we don't bid 6 or 7. just 8 to 10, including no trump. just saying.
JAE writes:
IS A NULLO BID ALLOWED IN 5-HAND 500? IF SO DOES THE BIDDER GET TO CALL FOR A CARD AND TAKE THAT PLAYER ALONG AS PARTNER (WHICH I WOULD THINK IS NOT DESIREABLE). OR ONLY GET THE BENEFIT OF THE 3-G9KYJCARD WIDOW. IS A PAT NULLO ALSO PERMITTED - WITH NO WIDOW?