Oh Hell Variants, Names & Scoring Systems
Few card games have been renamed, re-scored, and house-ruled as much as Oh Hell. The core is always the same — bid the exact number of tricks you'll take, and only an exact hit scores the bonus — but the name on the score sheet, the hand schedule, and the arithmetic vary from table to table. This guide maps the territory: what the game is called, how people score it, and where games like Wizard and Skull King fit in.
One game, many names
If you learned this game from family or friends, there's a good chance you know it by another name. All of the following refer to the same exact-bid trick-taking game, with at most minor local differences:
- Oh Hell! — the name most card-game references use, exclamation included. Politer households soften it to Oh Pshaw, Oh Well, or Oh Heck.
- Up and Down the River — common in Australia and New Zealand, named after the hand schedule that climbs to a maximum and comes back down.
- Blackout — a widespread North American name, sometimes reserved for versions where a missed bid scores nothing at all.
- Nomination Whist — a common British name (though it is also applied to a few other whist descendants, so check the rules before you sit down).
- Elevator — another schedule-inspired name: the hand size rides up and down like an elevator.
- German Bridge — the name the game goes by in Hong Kong.
- Blob and Bust — names that come from marking a failed bid on the score sheet with a blob, or going bust.
Whatever you call it, the rules on this site are the ones you already know: follow suit, trump wins, exact bid or no bonus.
A short history
Oh Hell is a member of the Whist family, and card-game references generally trace it to 1930s America; it spread quickly through home games and card-game anthologies rather than casinos or clubs, which is exactly why it picked up so many names along the way. Unlike most of its trick-taking relatives, it introduced a then-novel idea: winning more tricks is not better — only predicting your tricks exactly counts. That single twist keeps every player involved in every hand, whether they hold a monster hand or nothing at all.
For deeper reading on the game's origins and regional forms, see the entry at Pagat's card game archive and the Wikipedia article on Oh Hell.
Hand schedules
A game of Oh Hell is a fixed series of hands with changing hand sizes. The three common schedules:
- Descending — start at the maximum hand size and deal one fewer card each hand, down to one. Fast, and every hand gets tenser as the margin for error shrinks. This is the ohhell.app default (Quick Play deals 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1).
- Up-and-down (the "river" in Up and Down the River) — the hand size travels the full range and back, playing roughly twice as many hands. Some tables climb from one card up and back; ohhell.app's Full Up-and-Down Schedule room option starts at the maximum, descends to one-card hands, and climbs back up.
- Ascending — one card up to the maximum, then stop. Less common; some tables use it as a shorter session that still ends on the biggest, most skill-testing hands.
The maximum hand size follows from the player count — with a 52-card deck, 3–5 players commonly start at 10 (or seven for a faster game), while 7 players cap at 7 cards, and a 10-player table at 5.
Scoring systems
Scoring is where tables disagree the most. Every system rewards an exact bid; they differ in how hard they punish a miss and whether big bids are worth more than small ones.
| System | Made your bid | Missed your bid |
|---|---|---|
| Base 10 + tricks (ohhell.app default) | 10 + tricks taken | Tricks taken only |
| Exact or nothing (ohhell.app's Zero on Miss option; often played under the name Blackout) | 10 + tricks taken | 0 |
| Penalty scoring | 10 + tricks taken | Lose points equal to how far off you were |
| Big-bid bonus | Bonus grows with the bid (e.g. adding the square of the bid), making bold bids worth chasing | Usually 0 |
The consequences for strategy are real: under the default system a busted bid still banks its tricks, so chasing a risky extra trick is cheap; under exact-or-nothing or penalty scoring, a safe bid you can defend is worth far more than an ambitious one. If you switch systems, it pays to re-read the bidding advice with the new arithmetic in mind.
Bidding variants
- Sequential bidding — players bid in turn, starting left of the dealer. Later bidders see the running total, which is information worth using. This is the classic form and the ohhell.app default.
- Screw the Dealer — the dealer, bidding last, may not bring total bids equal to the number of tricks, so someone must miss every hand. On by default here; toggle it when creating a room.
- Simultaneous (blind) bidding — everyone commits a bid at the same time, traditionally by holding out a fist and revealing fingers on a count of three. No information from other bids, and no dealer constraint. Available on ohhell.app as the Simultaneous Bidding room option.
Related games
The exact-bid idea proved strong enough to spawn standalone games. If you enjoy Oh Hell, these are its closest relatives:
- Wizard — Ken Fisher's 1984 commercial variant adds four Wizards (always win) and four Jesters (always lose) to the standard deck, making bids swingier and voids less safe. Scoring is harsher too: 20 + 10 per trick for an exact bid, −10 per trick of error otherwise.
- Skull King — a pirate-themed descendant with special cards (pirates, mermaids, the Skull King himself) layered over the same bid-exactly core, plus bonus points for capturing particular cards.
- Estimation — a related exact-bid game popular in the Middle East, played with full 13-card deals and richer bidding conventions, including declaring to win the most tricks.
- Contract Whist / Nomination Whist relatives — several British whist descendants share the bid-then-play structure with their own trump-selection twists.
All of them inherit Oh Hell's central insight: the drama isn't in taking tricks, it's in being exactly right about how many you'll take.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Oh Hell the same game as Up and Down the River?
Yes. Up and Down the River is one of many regional names for Oh Hell — common in Australia and New Zealand — and usually implies the hand schedule that deals up to a maximum and back down again. Blackout, Oh Pshaw, Elevator, and German Bridge are other names for the same exact-bid trick-taking game.
What is the difference between Oh Hell and Wizard?
Wizard is a commercial 1984 variant of Oh Hell by Ken Fisher. It keeps the exact-bid idea but adds four Wizards (which always win the trick) and four Jesters (which always lose) to the standard 52-card deck, and uses its own scoring: 20 points plus 10 per trick for an exact bid, minus 10 per trick of error for a miss.
What is the most common Oh Hell scoring system?
The most widespread system awards 10 points plus 1 per trick taken for hitting your bid exactly, and just the tricks taken (no bonus) for a miss. Common house variants score a missed bid as zero, subtract the size of the miss as a penalty, or scale the bonus with the size of the bid.
Which Oh Hell variants can I play on ohhell.app?
When you create a room you can toggle Screw the Dealer, simultaneous (blind) bidding, a descending or full up-and-down hand schedule, and Zero on Miss scoring, and set 3 to 10 players with four time controls. Every combination is a traditional table variant, not an invention of the site.
New to the game entirely? Start with the rules or the interactive walkthrough, then come back and pick your house rules.