How to play Ulti online

The rules of the Ulti card game, in a paragraph

Three players share thirty-two cards. The bidding decides who plays alone against the other two, and every bidder may swap two cards with a talon before naming a higher contract. Then come ten tricks: follow suit, play a trump if you cannot, and beat the best card whenever you can. The declarer is paid by both defenders for each part of the bid that is made, and pays both for each part that fails.

The pack and the deal

Ulti, the national game in Hungary, is played with thirty-two cards, seven up to ace in four suits. The Hungarian pack calls the suits acorns (Makk), leaves (Zöld), bells (Tök) and hearts (Piros), and the table shows them as clubs, spades, diamonds and hearts. The queen is the over and the jack is the under. Hearts are the double suit, and the other three are the minor suits.

When there is a trump suit, every suit ranks ace, ten, king, queen, jack, nine, eight, seven, so the ten beats the king. With no trumps it is ace, king, queen, jack, ten, nine, eight, seven. Aces and tens are worth ten card points each and the last trick is worth ten, ninety in all.

The seat after the dealer, the opener, gets twelve cards and the other two get ten each, and the opener's two discards make it ten apiece. The deal moves to the next seat after every deal.

The auction and the talon

The opener throws any two cards face down, which makes the talon, and names a contract. Nobody can pass out the deal. The bidding then goes round the table. Each seat passes, or takes the talon, sees both cards, throws any two down and names a strictly higher contract. You may also name a higher contract without taking the talon. Once you look, you must bid. Three passes in a row end the bidding, and the last bidder is the declarer, who plays alone against the other two, the defenders.

An example. The opener throws two cards down and bids Simple game, the cheapest contract. The next seat takes the talon, sees the two cards, throws two down and bids Ulti, which outranks it. The third seat passes, the opener passes, and the bidder passes too. That is three passes in a row, so that seat is the declarer, and now names a trump suit.

A hearts bid and a no-trump bid fix the trumps. After a minor-suit bid the declarer names clubs, spades or diamonds, and a declarer with a plain Simple game in a minor suit may instead give up for minus 2 to each of the others, with no play. Aces and tens left in the talon count for the defenders.

The bids

Every bid is built from parts, each with its own value and each won or lost by itself. In a Simple game you win if your card points beat the other two's combined, and there are never ties, because the total is always an odd number of tens. Ulti gives the game its name: you promise to win the last trick with the trump 7. 40-100 promises a hundred card points, counting the trump king and queen as forty, and 20-100 does the same with a king and queen of another suit, counted as twenty. Betli means losing every trick. Durchmars means winning every trick, and it can be closed or open. Parts combine: a 40-100 ulti promises the hundred and the last trick with the 7.

Those parts make thirty-eight bids on twenty rungs. Bids rank by their value with the simple game's value left out, and the simple game's value only breaks a tie, so a bid has to be worth more than the last one to beat it. Bids of equal rank shut each other out. Betli and no-trump durchmars each come in three prices: plain, heart and open. The word heart in a no-trump bid only doubles the price. In an open betli or open durchmars all three hands turn face up after the first trick, and the two defenders may not discuss them. Four aces, a bonus some tables add, is not played here.

You may bid a part you cannot make. Ulti without the 7 fails when the deal is counted, and it costs the extra penalty described below.

Playing the tricks

The declarer leads to the first trick and the winner of each trick leads to the next, ten tricks in all. You must follow suit. With none of the suit, you must play a trump if you hold one. And you must beat the best card so far whenever you can, even when the other defender is the one winning. Say spades are trumps and someone leads a heart. With no hearts you must play a spade if you have one, and if a spade is already on the trick you must beat it when you can. With no trumps, following suit and beating the best card still apply, and a seat with none of the suit plays anything.

Those rules are how the 7 gets forced out. A declarer who bid ulti has to keep the trump 7 until the last trick, unless it is the only card the rules allow, and a must-follow or must-beat move can leave it as the only card. The table dims every card you may not play and says why.

Marriages, the twenties and forties

A king and queen of one suit in your hand at the start is a marriage. In trumps it is worth 40 card points, in another suit 20. The table declares every marriage for you, all at once, when you play your card to the first trick, and shows them as counts, such as a 20, two 20s or a 40 and a 20. In a Simple game or an Ulti every seat counts its own. In 40-100 only the declarer's forty counts, and in 20-100 only the declarer's one twenty. Nothing counts for the defenders when 40-100, 20-100 or durchmars was bid, or when there are no trumps. A side that wins no trick has no points.

Scoring, kontra and the bonuses

The score is kept in points, not money, and the scores always add up to zero. Each part has a value, and both defenders pay the declarer for every part won, or are paid for every part lost. In a minor suit the values are 1 for the Simple game, 4 for ulti, 4 for 40-100 and 8 for 20-100, and hearts double each of them. Betli is 5, heart betli 10 and open betli 20. Durchmars is 6, 12 in hearts and 24 open. Win a minor-suit Simple game and ulti together and each defender pays you 5. A lost ulti costs a further 4 in a minor suit, 8 in hearts.

If you are defending, you may say kontra to any part still at its normal price before you play your card to the first trick, and that part doubles for both defenders. After the first trick comes the chain: the declarer may rekontra, then szubkontra, hirskontra, mordkontra and fedáksári follow, the two sides taking turns. Each step doubles only what the last one raised, so the top is times sixty-four. The extra penalty for a lost ulti is never doubled.

Some points nobody bid, in a minor suit and doubled in hearts. The declarer winning the last trick with the 7 unbid is worth 2 from each defender, and losing it costs 4 to each. A 7 played last by a defender is paid the same way. If either side reaches a hundred card points in a trump contract without a 40-100 or 20-100 bid, and has taken a trick, the simple game is worth double. All ten tricks unbid is worth 3.

How a match ends

Real Ulti has no end, so ours is a fixed match. The host picks 6, 9 or 12 deals, and every seat opens the bidding and deals equally often. The highest total score after the last deal wins. If two seats are level at the top, deals continue one at a time until one seat leads.

We follow the robber ulti rules on Pagat, corrected by Gyula Zsigri, and where we simplify something the menu page says so.