Estimation

Setup

Four players, each on their own — there are no partnerships in Estimation, and the person opposite you is an opponent like everybody else. An ordinary 52-card pack, dealt out completely: thirteen cards each, nothing left over.

Thirteen cards means thirteen tricks, and a trick is the four cards everybody plays in turn onto the table. Whoever plays the strongest card takes it. The ace is the HIGHEST card in its suit here, not the lowest.

Every round has a TRUMP: a suit that beats every other suit, however small the card. The auction decides which one, except in the speed rounds at the end of a match, where it is fixed before anybody bids.

The suits rank in a fixed order that matters twice — no-trump first, then spades, hearts, diamonds and clubs. It breaks a tied bid, and it is the order the speed rounds are dealt in.

The lobby offers three match lengths, and they are all real formats rather than shortened ones. Eighteen rounds is the usual game and the one ranked play uses: thirteen auctioned rounds followed by the five speed rounds. Thirteen rounds is the Egyptian Estimation Committee's own tournament format, where every round is auctioned and no speed round is played at all. Twenty-four rounds is the long social game — nineteen auctioned and the same five.

These rules follow the Egyptian Estimation Committee of the Egyptian Bridge Federation, which publishes the laws and the official scoring table. Where the committee does not rule on something, the choice we made is stated below rather than left for you to discover mid-game.

How to play

Every round runs through five stages in the same order: the Dash offer, the auction, the declaration, the estimates, and then thirteen tricks.

FIRST, the Dash. Before anyone knows what the trump will be, each player in turn is asked whether they want to sit the round out on zero — a Dash. Taking one means promising to win not a single trick, and it is declared blind, which is the whole risk in it. At most two players may take it.

SECOND, the auction. Everyone else bids a number of tricks and a trump suit, or passes. The lowest bid the auction accepts is four. Each bid must beat the one standing: more tricks in any suit, or the same number in a higher-ranking suit. A pass is final — you do not get back in, and that is what makes the auction end.

You may also bid WITH the standing bid instead of over it — the same number and the same suit. That claims a share of the Call, and with it the Call's ten points either way. It is the one bid that is legal without being higher.

If all four players pass, the round is NOT dealt again. It is played at no-trump, the calls begin from the dealer, and no auction points are paid to anyone for anything that round — no Call, no With, no Risk and no Super Call.

THIRD, the declaration. Whoever won the auction confirms their final number and suit, and may raise the number or change the suit before anybody else calls. In a speed round that is the only moment the fixed trump can move, and only for a call of eight or more — which is a Super Call.

FOURTH, the estimates. Anyone who bid With calls first, then everybody else in turn, and nobody may say more than the Call did. The last player to speak may not make the table's total exactly thirteen. That is the rule the whole game rests on: somebody has to be wrong.

The last caller is at RISK when their number makes the table's total eleven or fewer, or fifteen or more. On the high side they must call at least two themselves to earn it; on the low side there is no such condition. Being at Risk is worth ten points either way.

FIFTH, the play. The Call leads the first card. Everyone must follow the suit that was led if they hold it; if they cannot, they may play anything, trump included — there is no obligation to trump and none to win.

A card of neither the led suit nor the trump cannot win, however high it is. The ace of clubs thrown on a heart lead is a discard, not a winner.

You are trying to take EXACTLY your number. Taking one more is as bad as taking one fewer, which is why a high card can be the last thing you want in your hand.

Controls

When the Dash offer comes to you, two buttons: take it, or play the round normally. It is asked once and it does not come back.

In the auction, pick a number and a suit and tap Bid, or tap Pass. Bids that cannot beat the standing one are greyed out rather than refused after the fact, so you can see what the standing bid is costing you.

A With button appears beside them whenever there is a standing bid you have not joined yet — more than one player may join the same bid. It needs no picker — it matches the standing number and suit exactly, which is what a With is.

If you win the auction, a declaration panel opens on your number and suit. Confirming what you won on is one tap; raising or changing the suit is a tap on each first. In a speed round the suit picker stays locked until your number reaches eight, and then opens.

When it is your turn to estimate, a row of numbers appears from zero up to the Call's number. Any number that would make the table's total thirteen is disabled, and only for the last player to speak, because only they carry that rule.

During the play, tap a card to play it. The cards you may legally play are lifted; the ones that would break the follow-suit rule sit down in the rail and cannot be tapped at all.

A completed trick stays on the table for about a second and is then drawn into the seat that took it, so you can see who won it and where the count went. Turn on Reduce Motion in Settings and the pause stays while the travel goes.

The scoreboard along the top carries every player's bid, how many they have taken so far, and their running total. That is the whole state of the round and it is never hidden from anybody — at a real table it is all said out loud.

This is not a pass-the-phone game. Four hidden hands means four devices.

Scoring

The numbers here are the Egyptian Estimation Committee's published table, not a variant of it. Take exactly what you said and you score 13 points plus the number you bid — so a bid of four made is 17, and a bid of six made is 19.

Add 10 more if you are the Call, or if you bid With and called the Call's own number. Add 10 more if you were the only player at the table to make your bid. Add 10 more if you were the last to estimate and at Risk. Miss it and you lose the DIFFERENCE, and the same tens count against you instead — they stack, so a lone Call one out loses 21.

A Call of eight or more is a SUPER CALL and is scored on its own line: 41 points for eight, 42 for nine, 43 for ten, and on by one from there. A failed Super Call costs 20 plus the difference. Those are flat figures and they replace the Call's ten rather than adding to it.

A Dash is scored on the TABLE's total rather than on your own. It pays 23 if the four estimates come to less than thirteen between them, and 13 if they come to more. The first is worth more because it is harder — when the table has under-bid there are spare tricks looking for an owner, and avoiding every one of them is the difficult version. A failed Dash costs the tricks you took, and ten more if the table had under-bid.

Being the only player to make their bid adds ten; being the only one to miss takes ten away. A Dash counts in that census — it can make somebody else the only one to have made it — but does not collect the ten itself, because the table pays that bonus on the ordinary points and a Dash's points are not ordinary points.

In a round nobody bid on, none of the above is paid: everybody scores 13 plus their number if they make it and the difference if they do not, and that is all.

Scores go DOWN as well as up, and a bad round genuinely hurts.

Winning a match is worth 30 points towards your level, a draw 10, and a loss still pays 4 — the highest win in the catalogue, because this is the longest game in it.

Estimation seats four, so like every game here that seats more than two it awards points and stats and leaves the ranked ladder alone.

Winning five matches earns this game's badge, as every title here has one.

Winning

The highest total when the last round has been scored takes the match. Not the most tricks, and not the most rounds made — the most points.

That is worth saying plainly because it changes how you play the last round: a player who is fifty behind cannot win by making a careful four, and has to call something bigger than they are comfortable with.

If two or more players finish level at the top, the match is a draw between exactly those players and nobody else.

A player who leaves ends the match, because thirteen tricks cannot be played by three people and there is no rule for it. The standings at that moment decide it, and the player who walked out cannot win however far ahead they were.

Tips

Count your certain tricks before you count your hopeful ones. An ace is a trick; a king is usually a trick if you have a second card in that suit to protect it; a queen on its own is rarely anything.

A long trump suit is worth more than the cards in it. Five of a suit means the last two are probably winners once everybody else has run out, and that is where a bid of six comes from.

The Call is expensive, and that is the single most useful thing to know about this scoring. Its ten points cut both ways, and a call you make only sometimes is worth less than an ordinary bid you make often. Fight for it on a hand that can carry it and let it go on one that cannot.

Watch what falls. If you bid three and you have taken three by the seventh trick, the rest of your hand is a liability and your job for six more tricks is to lose them on purpose.

The Dash is not a way out of a bad hand. It wants a hand with no ace, no long suit and nothing that will be forced to win late — a hand full of middling cards is the WORST kind of Dash, because middling cards win tricks nobody wanted.

Being last to estimate is worth ten points and it is not a gift. You get to see everybody else's number, but you also cannot say the one you actually wanted if it totals thirteen, and the ten is only paid when you push the table two clear of it.