How to play Card on the Forehead Whist

Say how many tricks you are going to take, then take exactly that many. The one-card hands are played with the card on your forehead: everybody sees every card except their own. A match is a fixed run of hands from one card each up to eight and back down again, and the highest total wins.

Three to six players, dealt from a pack cut down to fit: the top two ranks per player of every suit, so a four-player table plays from the seven upwards.

The hand sizes are fixed in advance: one card each for as many hands as there are players, then two up to seven, then eight cards each for as many hands as there are players, then back down, and the one-card hands again to finish. A four-player match is twenty-four hands.

A card is turned from what is left over to fix the atu, and it takes no further part. In the eight-card hands the whole pack is dealt out, so there is nothing left to turn and they are played with no trump.

The one-card hands are played cartea pe frunte. Nobody looks at their own card: you hold it out facing the table, so every card at that deal is public except the one in your own hand. Every other hand is dealt and played exactly as anywhere else.

Starting to the dealer's left and ending with the dealer, each player says how many tricks they will take, from none up to the size of the hand. Bids are public the moment they are made.

The dealer is the one seat that is not free. The bids may not add up to the number of tricks there are to take, so the dealer may not name the one value that would make them add up.

That single rule is what makes this a game: the table can never claim exactly what is on offer, so somebody has to miss every hand. It costs the dealer real points, which is why the deal moves one seat on every hand.

In a cartea pe frunte hand you are bidding a card you have never seen. What you have instead is everybody else's: if the two highest trumps are being held out at you, the one trick going is not yours. The dealer's forbidden value bites hardest here.

1. The player to the dealer's left leads the first trick. After that, whoever took the last trick leads.

2. Follow the led suit if you hold it.

3. If you are void in it, you must play a trump if you hold one.

4. Holding neither, play anything.

Those are the only two obligations. You are never made to play higher than the card that is winning, and never made to overtrump. Ducking is most of the skill here, because the moment you have the tricks you promised you have to stop taking them.

The highest trump takes the trick; if nobody trumped, the highest card of the led suit does.

A one-card hand leaves nobody a choice, so a cartea pe frunte hand is decided entirely in the bidding. You play the card you have never seen and find out what it was at the same moment everybody else does.

Take exactly what you said and you score 5 plus the tricks you took: a bid of three made is 8, and a bid of none made is a clean 5 for taking nothing at all.

Miss it in either direction and you lose the difference. Bid four and take two and it is −2; bid one and take three and it is −2 as well. Overshooting costs exactly what falling short does, which is why a player who is already home spends the rest of the hand throwing tricks away.

Five hands running. Five contracts made one after another is worth 10 points on top of them; five missed in a row costs 10. Making one resets the missed run, and missing one resets the made run.

The one-card hands sit outside it. They are luck rather than judgement, so they neither build a run nor break one.

That matters more here than anywhere: the hands you are blind in cannot cost you a run you built with your eyes open.

The match is over when the schedule is. There is no target score and no early finish, and the highest total wins.

The schedule is the same at every seat count: three hands per player plus twelve, so a four-player match is twenty-four and a six-player one is thirty.

Open the scores at the top of the table whenever you like.

When it is your turn to bid, the numbers you may say appear under your hand. The one the dealer is forbidden is simply not offered.

In play, tap a card and then the button under your hand, or drag it into the middle of the table. Cards you may not play do not respond, so following suit and the obligation to trump are never something you have to hold in your head.

Everybody's bid and everybody's tricks so far sit beside their name for the whole hand. Knowing who still needs two is most of what you are playing against.

In a cartea pe frunte hand your own card is drawn face down and the button under it plays it without ever showing it to you. Everybody else's card is drawn under their name, beside their bid.

A practice match runs entirely on your device against bots, with no connection needed. A bot sees only what any opponent could see: your hand stays hidden, so it cannot cheat.

Online, a bot steps in for a player who has gone quiet, so the table keeps moving.

In a cartea pe frunte hand a bot's own card is hidden from it exactly as yours is from you, and it bids off what it can see of everybody else's.