Estimation: The Exciting Game of Guessing and Winning Tricks!

Are you ready to play Estimation? It’s a super fun game that’s played just like it sounds. Originating from the fascinating Middle East, Estimation is a trick-taking game that puts your guessing skills to the test. The challenge? To estimate the exact number of tricks you will win in each hand. It’s not as easy as it seems, but if you can nail your estimates, you’ll score points. However, be careful! If you win more or fewer tricks than you estimated, you’ll lose precious points!

Setting Up for Fun

Now, let’s get everything ready for a thrilling game of Estimation. The first thing we need to determine is the seating arrangement and the first dealer. How do we do that? By drawing cards, of course! Shuffle the deck and have each player draw a card. The player with the highest card becomes the first dealer and gets to pick their seat first. On the other hand, the player with the lowest card will choose their seat last. Keep in mind, the dealing order will rotate counterclockwise as the game progresses.

Alright, here’s how the game goes. First, the dealer shuffles the deck and the player to their right gets to cut it. Then, the dealer starts dealing the cards, one by one, to each player. By the end, each player should have a total of thirteen cards.

Important! Card Ranking

Now, let’s talk about the order of the cards from low to high. It goes like this: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, Jack, Queen, King, and ace.

GAMEPLAY – Time to Play

Once everyone has their cards, we can start the bidding. It all begins with the player on the dealer’s right leading the first trick. From there, each player will take turns making a bid, moving clockwise around the group. The bid is the number of tricks a player believes they can win during the hand.

When it comes to bidding in the card game of Dash, there are a few important rules to keep in mind. First, the minimum bid is four, unless you decide to make a Dash call. A Dash call means that you don’t believe you will win any of the tricks. Bidding continues until all players have made their bid.

Once all the bids are in, the player with the highest bid becomes the Declarer. The suit of their bidding card becomes the trump suit for the round. The other players then state how many tricks they think they can win, but they cannot declare more tricks than the Declarer.

In the final five rounds, bidding changes a bit. Instead of going through the bidding process, players immediately state how many tricks they think they can win. The trump suit is determined by the hand being played. For the 14th hand, there is no trump suit. For the 15th hand, spades are the trump suit. For the 16th hand, hearts are the trump suit. For the 17th hand, diamonds are the trump suit. And for the 18th hand, clubs are the trump suit.

Once the bidding is finished, the game starts. We’ll go around the group counterclockwise, and each player will take a turn to play a card. If they have a card that matches the suit of the first card played, they have to play it. Otherwise, they can choose any card they want. The player who plays the highest trump card wins the round! If there’s no trump suit, the player with the highest card wins instead.

Players only get points for the rounds they win if they win the exact number of rounds they bid for. They’ll score the same number of points as the rounds they won. If they don’t win the same number of rounds they bid for, they lose points. They subtract the difference between their bid and the rounds they actually won from their total score.

The game ends when all the cards have been played. We then count up the points, shuffle the cards, and start a new round!

END OF THE GAME

The game ends after we’ve played 18 rounds. At that point, each player adds up all their points from the different rounds. The player with the most points is the winner!