Spekulatius 1999

Spekulatius is a variant of the classic trick-taking game Oh Hell!. The deck consists of four suits with cards in each suit numbered 1-20 and four jokers. In each round of the game, players are dealt a certain number of cards -- for a typical game this starts at ten cards for the first round and one fewer each successive round, until the tenth round when players only receive one card, and then in each round thereafter players receive one more card per round until the nineteenth round where players again receive ten.

In each round, a card is turned up from the deck to show what suit is trump and players must speculate how many tricks they will take in the round. Players must follow suit of the lead card when possible, and can play off or trump when they have a void in the lead suit. The player who played the highest on-suit card or trump wins the trick and leads the next trick.

Jokers occupy a special space in the game -- they can always be played, and when the player plays a Joker, he or she announces whether it is "top" -- which means it is the best card that can be played, or "flop" which means it dodges the trick. When more than one player plays a Joker in a round, the last-played Joker is controlling, meaning it would "top" a previously-played "top" joker.

At the end of the round, players score points based on how many tricks they took, one point per trick. Players that successfully speculated their bid exactly receive a ten-point bonus to their score; thus an exactly-made bid of 3 nets 13 points, or an exactly-made bid of 0 nets 10 points. The game is played over nineteen rounds (or ten for a short game), and the player with the highest score total is the winner.

The game lists that it is playable up to eleven people, but the deck of cards only has 84 in it. The rules suggest with more people that players use the same progression of hands with fewer cards per player on the largest hands (e.g., thirteen rounds with eleven players, progressing 7-6-5 . . . 5-6-7).