Preferans rules

The card game of Russia and the Balkans, played on a scoresheet ruled into three columns and often for a whole evening. Three players.

The deck

32 cards, seven up to ace. Ten cards each and two face down as the talon.

The scoresheet

Three areas, and they are the game. The pool (pulya) records contracts you have made. The mountain (gora) records penalties. The whists record tricks you took while defending. You are trying to fill the pool to an agreed size, usually 10.

The bidding

Bids name a number of tricks from six to ten and a denomination, ranking spades, clubs, diamonds, hearts, no-trump. Misère — take no tricks at all — sits between seven and eight.

The declarer takes the talon, discards two, and names the final contract.

Whisting

The two defenders then decide whether to whist — to oppose the contract — or to pass. If both pass, the declarer plays the hand open against a dummy, and if either whists they play together against the declarer with an obligation to take a set number of tricks between them.

The play

Follow suit if you can, and you must beat the highest card played if you are able. If you cannot follow, you must trump. Highest trump wins.

Scoring

Make the contract and write its value into your pool. Fail and write the shortfall into your mountain, where it counts against you. Defenders write the tricks they took under the declarer's name in the whist column.

At the end, mountains are subtracted and whists settled between the defenders, so the arithmetic runs the whole evening rather than each hand.