Sheephead

Three to six players, queens and jacks are trump, and the picker takes the blind.

New game

Players

This is what everybody else at the table sees, so it is worth changing.

Game settings

These are remembered, so a new game uses them again unless you change them.

Game settings

Everything here is remembered between games. Changes to pace and speech take effect straight away; rule changes take effect from the next hand, so a hand in progress is never scored by rules it did not start under.

Rules

Doublers

House rules that multiply what a hand is worth. A doubler applies to the whole hand however it turns out, so holding the queens and going down costs double as well. Two doublers on the same hand make it worth four times.

Appearance

Only takes effect on screens wider than about 1024px; phones and tablets are unaffected either way. Two columns fits the current trick and the scores on screen without scrolling, at the cost of a wider eye path. Reading order is identical in both.

Both styles carry exactly the same information and read identically to a screen reader. Plain uses bigger, simpler glyphs and no table dressing.

Pace and speech

On four and ten seconds there is a Continue button as well, so you never have to sit out a pause you did not want — press N or activate Continue to take the next play straight away. Screen reader users often prefer Instant or Manual. With Instant, a run of opponent plays is announced as one message so nothing gets cut off.

How to play Sheephead

The rules of the game. For keyboard and screen reader guidance, use the Accessibility hints button at the bottom, or press ?.

The idea

Sheephead is a trick taking game about capturing card points. One player, the picker, takes on the rest of the table, usually with a secret partner. The picker's side needs more than half the points in the deck to win the hand.

The deck

Thirty-two cards: seven, eight, nine, ten, jack, queen, king and ace in each suit. At four players the seven and eight of diamonds come out, leaving thirty, so that everyone still gets a full hand with a two card blind. Both are worth nothing, so a hand is 120 points at every table size.

Trump is a single fourteen card suit made of all four queens, then all four jacks, then the whole diamond suit. From highest to lowest: queen of clubs, queen of spades, queen of hearts, queen of diamonds, jack of clubs, jack of spades, jack of hearts, jack of diamonds, then ace, ten, king, nine, eight and seven of diamonds.

Fail suits are clubs, spades and hearts, ranked ace, ten, king, nine, eight, seven. Two things surprise new players: the ten sits above the king, and the queens and jacks are not in their fail suits at all, they are trump. So the highest club is the ace of clubs, not the queen or the jack of clubs.

Card values: ace 11, ten 10, king 4, queen 3, jack 2, and nine, eight and seven nothing. That is 120 points in the deck.

The deal

Everyone gets a hand and a small blind is set aside. Starting to the dealer's left, each player may pick up the blind or pass. Whoever picks takes the blind into their hand and buries the same number of cards face down; those buried cards count for the picker's team at the end, so it pays to bury points you could not otherwise protect.

With four, five or six players the jack of diamonds is the secret partner card. Whoever holds it plays with the picker but says nothing until the card hits the table. If the picker holds it or buries it, the picker plays alone against everyone.

None of that is announced. The sides only become public when the jack of diamonds is actually played: if somebody else plays it they are the partner, and if the picker plays it themselves that is the moment everyone learns the picker is alone. If the picker buried it, nobody finds out until the hand is scored. You are told your own situation, whether you picked or hold the jack, but never anyone else's.

With three players there is no partner card and the picker is always alone, which everyone knows in advance.

Play

The player to the dealer's left leads. You must follow the suit that was led if you can. Remember that trump is its own suit: if a queen, jack or diamond is led, every queen, jack and diamond in your hand must follow it, and a queen of clubs does not follow a lead of clubs. Highest trump takes the trick; if no trump is played, the highest card of the led suit takes it. If you cannot follow, you may play anything, including trump.

Winning the hand

The picker's team needs 61 of the 120 points. A normal win pays one unit, 91 or more pays two (a schneider), and taking every trick pays three. If the picker's team falls short they pay double, and more if they are held to 30 points or fewer, or take no tricks at all. Each opponent settles for two units times the multiplier; the picker takes roughly two thirds of that pot and the partner one third.

Leaster

If everyone passes and you chose the leaster option, there is no picker. Everyone plays for themselves, the blind goes to whoever wins the last trick, and the player with the fewest points wins. You must have taken at least one trick to be eligible, so ducking every single trick loses.

Two different numbers on the table

The players table shows two things that are easy to mix up. Card points this hand is what you have taken in tricks out of the 120 in the deck; those always total 120 across everyone, plus whatever the picker buried. Game score is the running total in scoring units across all the hands you have played; those always total zero, so one player being well ahead means the others are behind by the same amount. The Total row at the bottom tracks points taken so far, and once the last trick is played it shows the full accounting, taken plus buried, which should come to 120.

Accessibility hints

Keyboard, screen reader and pacing guidance. For the rules of the game, use the How to play button at the bottom.

You can play without learning anything

Tab and Shift+Tab reach every control, and Enter or Space activates whatever you land on. That alone is enough to play a whole game. Everything below is optional convenience.

Screen reader modes

The game does not override your reading mode. Nothing here is marked as an application region, so browse mode, focus mode and forms mode all behave exactly as they normally do, and you stay in charge of switching between them.

The consequence worth knowing: in browse mode your screen reader keeps single letter keys for its own quick navigation, so the game's letter shortcuts below will not reach the page. Switch to focus or forms mode when you want them; in NVDA that is NVDA+Space. If you would rather never switch, every letter shortcut also has a button in the Review the game group, and those work in any mode.

Your hand

Review keys

The game log

G jumps to the newest entry. From there Up and Down move one entry at a time, Page Up and Page Down move ten, and Home and End go to the newest and oldest. The log is never spoken automatically, so you can read back through it at your own pace without it interrupting play. Number keys are ignored inside it, so you cannot play a card by accident while reading.

Pacing and speech

Opponents' turns can advance instantly, after four seconds, after ten seconds, or only when you press a Continue button. On instant, a whole run of opponent plays is announced as one message, so nothing is cut off part way through by the next play. On four seconds, ten seconds and manual, each play is announced on its own as it happens — there is room for it to finish. You can also turn off point values in card announcements, and stop focus moving to your cards when your turn comes.

The Continue button is there on four and ten seconds too, not only in manual mode. A timed pause is a ceiling, not a wait you are held to: if you have heard enough, take the next play straight away and the pending pause is dropped.

N advances the game: wherever there is a Continue button it plays the next turn, and when a hand has finished it deals the next one. It does the same as pressing Enter on the Continue or Deal next hand button, and it is ignored while you are reading the game log so you cannot advance by accident.

If something looks wrong

E exports a full written account of every finished hand, including who was dealt what, who picked, what was buried and every card played, with an automatic check that the points add up. B opens Report a bug, which builds that same log into a report along with your browser and settings, copies it to your clipboard and opens a prefilled GitHub issue. A read only box shows exactly what will be copied, and nothing leaves your machine until you post it yourself.

Export game log

A complete account of every finished hand: who was dealt what, who picked, what was buried, every card played, and an automatic check that the points add up. The hand you are part way through is reported from your seat only, so this cannot be used to see other hands.

Report a bug

This puts the whole report on your clipboard and opens a new issue on GitHub with the summary already filled in. Paste the report into the issue body and post it. You will need a GitHub account. Nothing is sent anywhere until you post it yourself.