Board Game Arena

We are happy today to present you with two classic trick taking card games from the public domain, Oh Hell! and French Belote.

Oh Hell! is a traditional trick taking game with many names (Blackout, Crazy Bridge, Elevator, Riki Tiki, Up and Down the River... to name a few) and many variants. On each round, each player will bet on the number of tricks he/she can take, then try to take exactly that number of tricks during the round to maximise the points earned. But the thing is... the sum of the bids of all players cannot be exactly the number of tricks for the round, so everyone cannot make it! Also, the first round will be played with a hand of 7 to 10 cards (depending of the number of players, from 3 up to 7 people can play together), then on the next round the hand will be one card fewer and so on until it reaches just one card, then one card more back up to the starting level. Hence the feeling of going down to hell (and back hopefully), and sometimes things go very wrong so... Oh Hell!

Oh Hell! has been developed on BGA studio by marcgenesis, who previoulsy implemented the nice "wood cutting competition" abstract Logger. Thanks a lot for this new game!


Belote is a classic French card game which is one of the most played in the country. In this game, you'll work with a partner as a team to try to take the most and the best tricks in order to earn more points than the opposite team. Your first choice will be to take (or leave) an upturned card with incomplete information (only 5 of your hand of 8 cards will be visible at that point), and that choice will determine the trump suit for the rest of the game, unless no one takes it on the first turn. Then players will try to take as many tricks as possible, which needs both skill and knowing well the way your partner plays to make the best of good and bad hands. If you get both the king and queen in the trump suit, you'll also call "Belote" and "Rebelote" when playing them, to get 20 extra points. Belote is an addictive game in which a lot of pleasure comes with playing often with the same partner, and getting to understand what his next moves will be from the previous ones, then go with the flow to help and strengthen. It's also the first game on BGA where you can form teams - just like in real life - by the sitting order at the table! The first and third players to join the table will be together, and the second and fourth will be the opposite team. Of course, the table admin can take advantage of the invitation system to set the teams in advance if he is playing with friends.

Belote has been implemented by Nanaki404. It's his first game created with BGA Studio, and he did a great job for a first! A big thank you for bringing this game to BGA players!

Games doesn't works on es links

I should change to en language for play.

Belote is the most played card game in my country (Bulgaria). Kids play it in school all the time, it even gets teachers angry. Oh Hell! is also a very popular game, one of the top 5 card games played, for sure. I wonder in which other countries these 2 games are very popular? I didn't know Belote is also the top card game in France.

I created a bug report for Oh Hell! but it doesn't look like the game gives you enough time (I think it isn't adding the 'per turn' time)......

I would recommend anyone playing it to play on the 'slow speed' setting to give everyone time.

Here is the bug report
https://en.boardgamearena.com/#!bug?id=5764

Bug already fixed......BGA is awesome.

Can you make an option for "Oh Hell" with big penalties for every trick you bid and didn't took, like -5 or -10 points? As far as I know this version is quite popular in real life.

We call it Bela or Belot in Croatia and is by far the most popular card game over here. Everybody plays it.

While reading the Belote rules feels like both are very similar games, core is probably the same with some changes involved. I ll find out soon.

Thank you

Oh Hell , in south of Brazil is called fuck you

Now, there are two interesting variations of the game: one you get score penalty for each trick you failed to guess.

I for one like better the version which you lose one card for each trick which you fail to guess. the winner is the one person with remaining cards.

I really love this game anyway, min any version

First of all, thanks to BGA implementing one of my favorites, Oh Hell!

If I may, I'd like to have some variation as an option regarding to the sequence of hands. Pagat states there may be a shorter sequence of hands by only going up/down once, as in we start from hand of 1, then ends the game with 10 hand, or vice versa.

I know traditional games have many variants and BGA simply cannot implement them all. For one, I thought implementing other sequence would be great particularly because that gives us shorter playing time which some of us prefers.

Thanks!

Yes, Oh Hell! in Argentina isn't so popular but old people knows it as "Pocha"

I played with them and they score, if you don't reach your bid, you loss X points. (if you bid 5 and get 4, you will lose 1 point). And winners get like here, 10+bids.