scoring variant

[Giordano Bruno 1974]

The varient I was taught, you got 10 points for making your bid plus one for each trick but no points whatsoever if you failed to make your bid (either over or under).

[Paddles]

The varient I was taught, you got 10 points for making your bid plus one for each trick but no points whatsoever if you failed to make your bid (either over or under).

This is already available here, as the "Neutral" scoring option.

[Giordano Bruno 1974]

Thanks. I'll give that a go some time.

[57erniepyle]

Replying to NatureBoy and simultaneous bidding. I also grew up with simultaneous bidding. On the other hand I like the bga's version where the dealer must bid so things cannot come out even. Maybe a blended option, where everyone but the dealer bids simultaneously, then the dealer has to bid so that things don't come out right.

[Mishe11e]

We play with simultaneous bidding, but with the rule that if it comes out even, the dealer has to change. We also play that if the trump card is a 2, 3, or 4, this means there is no trump.

As for scoring, we want to encourage taking risks, but also discourage unrealistic bids. So a winning bid scores 10 points plus the square of the bid, and a losing bid goes down the square of the difference. So if you bid 3 and make it, you score 19, but if you only take one, you would go down 4.

[Andrew Hatch]

If you think that bidding 0 rather than high is easier, then you should think that the positive option works best for rewarding those that are choosing the less favourable option.

My only problem with this option is that it may encourage strange high bids with the reasoning - if I throw other people of their true bids and try and steal some points by winning as many tricks as possible. While this rarely works to good effect it can spoil the game for the others.

A really nice variant that I used to play at home comes from dealing 12 cards and choosing 3 face down to represent the number of tricks you want to win out of the 9 remaining cards you have in hand. 0 for diamonds, 1 for spades, 2 for hearts, 3 for clubs. So you could select 1 diamond, 1 spade and 1 heart to suggest you thought you'd win 3 tricks. The same bonus of 10 applies.

The bidding variant that you described is actually the game "99," and you can play it on BGA! It can be hard to get a game going, though.

[marmarti]

Here is my family scoring system. We tested a few variants but this our prefered one :

All bids are simultaneous (more fun!!!)
Trump is determined by last card not distributed. If King or Queen : it's a turn without trump.

Scoring :
If you succeed what you ask, you win twice (×2) your bid
Ex : Bid 1 and succeed, win 2 points, bid 2, win 4, bid 3, win 6 etc.

Important : bid 0 Win 0 (0×2=0). This is important as a 0 is often just laziness, it's more fun to encourage risk takers.

If you fail, you lose your mistake (difference between what you bid and what you achieve)
Ex : bid 1, finish with 3, then you lose 2 pts. (Différence between 1 and 3),
This works both ways : whether you achieve more or less than what you bid

If anyone test it and like this scoring variant, please encourage it !