What Is Oh Hell?
Oh Hell — also called Blackout, Elevator, or Up the River — is a trick-taking game with one beautifully cruel rule: you must win EXACTLY the number of tricks you bid. Win one more than you promised and you score nothing. Win one fewer and you score nothing. Only hitting your number exactly earns points. The game is played over many rounds with constantly changing hand sizes, so the challenge shifts every round.
What You Need
- One standard deck of 52 playing cards
- Three to seven players
- Score pad
How the Rounds Are Structured
In round one, each player receives one card. In round two, two cards each. This continues, adding one card per round, until the maximum hand size is reached — typically determined by dividing 52 by the number of players. Then rounds decrease back down to one card each. The whole game plays out over many rounds.
Example with five players: maximum hand size is about 10 cards. Rounds go 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 — nineteen rounds total.
Setting Up Each Round
- Deal the correct number of cards to each player.
- Flip the top remaining card face-up to establish the trump suit for this round.
- Starting left of the dealer, every player bids the exact number of tricks they believe they will win. Zero is a valid bid — you can promise to win nothing.
- The dealer bids last and cannot bid a number that makes the total of all bids equal the number of tricks available this round. This critical restriction guarantees that at least one player will be wrong.
How to Play
- The player to the left of the dealer leads any card.
- Going clockwise, each player must follow suit if they have a card of the led suit.
- If you cannot follow suit, play any card — including trump.
- The highest trump wins if any trump was played. If not, the highest card of the led suit wins.
- The winner of each trick leads the next one.
- Play until all tricks for the round are finished.
Scoring
- Hit your exact bid: Score 10 points plus your bid. Bid 3 and win exactly 3 = 13 points. Bid 0 and win 0 = 10 points.
- Miss your bid by any amount: Score zero for the round. No partial credit.
Winning
After all rounds, the player with the highest total score wins.
Tips for New Players
- In the early rounds with very few cards, your options are limited — with one card, you either win the trick or you don’t. Focus on whether your card is likely to be the highest played.
- Watch the total bids before your turn — if everyone has bid 1 each out of 5 available tricks, someone is going to win an extra trick they didn’t want.
- Bidding zero requires actively avoiding winning tricks — play your lowest cards, let opponents win, and resist the urge to play high cards.