How to play 28
Four players, two partnerships, thirty-two cards. Two minutes to learn; the rest is judgement.
The table
Four players sit in two partnerships, partners opposite each other. Play runs counter-clockwise, so the person to your right plays after you.
1. The Jack is the highest card
This is the thing that catches everybody out. The ranking, strongest first, is J 9 A 10 K Q 8 7. The Jack beats the Nine, the Nine beats the Ace, and the King — which is a big card in almost every other game — sits in the middle doing very little.
The deck is thirty-two cards: those eight ranks in each of four suits. There are no cards below the Seven.
2. Twenty-eight points in the deck
Only four ranks carry points, and this is where the name comes from:
| Card | Points | Per deck |
|---|---|---|
| Jack | 3 | 12 |
| Nine | 2 | 8 |
| Ace | 1 | 4 |
| Ten | 1 | 4 |
| Total | 28 |
King, Queen, Eight and Seven are worth nothing. They still win tricks — a King takes a Queen — but they carry no points, which is what makes a trick full of low cards worth taking anyway when you are drawing out trumps.
3. Bidding
Everyone is dealt four cards. Looking only at those four, each player in turn either passes or bids: a number from 14 to 28, meaning “my side will take at least that many of the 28 points”. Each bid must beat the one before.
The higher the contract, the more it is worth — and the more it costs when it fails. A bid of 14–19 is worth one game point, 20–24 two, 25–27 three, and a bid of the whole 28 is worth four.
4. Trump, face down
The player who wins the bidding chooses a trump suit — and does not announce it. They take one card of that suit from their hand and place it face down. Nobody knows the suit, not even their partner.
Later, a player who cannot follow the suit that was led may ask for the trump to be turned up. The bidder can also reveal it themselves on their own turn. Once it is up, trump beats everything outside its suit for the rest of the hand.
Deciding when to call for the trump is most of the skill in 28. Call early and you tell the whole table what the bidder holds; call late and you may have thrown away the trick you needed.
5. Playing the hand
The remaining cards are dealt so everyone holds eight, and eight tricks are played. You must follow the suit that was led if you can. If you cannot, you may play anything — including, once trump is revealed, a trump.
The highest card of the led suit takes the trick, unless somebody played a revealed trump, in which case the highest trump takes it. The winner leads the next trick.
Scoring
At the end of the hand, each side counts the card points it captured. If the bidding side reached its contract, it takes the game points. If it fell short — set — the defenders take them instead. First side to five game points wins the match.
That is the game
Everything else is judgement: how high to bid on four cards, which suit to name, when to call for the trump, and which of your partner’s leads to read as a signal.
The complete rules as this implementation applies them, including every configurable value, are on the rules page.