Trick-taking game

A trick-taking game is a card game or tile-based game in which play of a "hand" centers on a series of finite rounds or units of play, called tricks, which are each evaluated to determine a winner or "taker" of that trick. The object of such games then may be closely tied to the number of tricks taken, as in plain-trick games such as Whist, Contract Bridge, Spades, Napoleon, Euchre, Rowboat, and Spoil Five, or on the value of the cards contained in taken tricks, as in point-trick games such as Pinochle, the Tarot family, Rook, All Fours, Manille, Briscola, and most "evasion" games like Hearts. The domino game Texas 42 is an example of a trick-taking game that is not a card game.

Trick-and-draw games are trick-taking games in which the players can fill up their hands after each trick. Typically, players are free to play any card into a trick in the first phase of the game, but must follow suit as soon as the score is depleted.

Basic structure

Certain actions in trick-taking games with three or more players always proceed in the same direction. In games originating in North and West Europe including England, Russia, and the United States and Canada, the rotation is typically clockwise, i.e. play proceeds to the left; in South and East Europe and Asia it is typically counterclockwise, so that play proceeds to the right. When games move from one region to another, they tend to initially preserve their original sense of rotation, but a region with a dominant sense of rotation may adapt a migrated game to its own sensibilities. For two-player games the order of play is moot as either direction would result in exactly the same turn order.