How to play Smear
Win your points. Lose your friends.
Play SmearSix cards, six tricks, six points
Smear is a trick-taking card game built around bidding and choosing when to play your strongest cards. Everyone holds six cards, and six points are available each hand. Before play begins, players bid on how many points they expect to take. The highest bidder leads, and the suit they lead becomes trump.
Make your bid and you score what you took. Miss it and you go backwards by the whole bid. First to 21 wins.
It plays three to eight people in twenty to forty minutes. At four, six or eight, the host can split the table into random pairs, and then you are bidding for a partner you cannot talk to.
The deck and the deal
The deck is a standard 52 plus a big joker and a little joker. Low cards come out of all four suits until everyone can be dealt exactly six, and the cards left over sit face down as the sleepers: six at an even table, four at an odd one. At four players the deck runs 8 to ace; at eight it is the whole deck.
With partners on, the pairs are drawn at random when the match starts, and partners score together as one side.
Bidding and playing a hand
Each player bids once on how many of the six points they expect to take, before anyone knows what trump will be. A bid has to be higher than the one before it, or you pass. If everybody passes, the dealer has to take the bid at 2.
Bidding starts with the player on the dealer's left and goes round once. Bids run from 2 to 6.
The highest bidder leads the first trick, and the suit of that card is trump for the hand. The first lead cannot be a joker.
Trump ranks from the ace down to the lowest card in play, and both jokers sit underneath: the big joker, then the little joker. A joker can be led to any trick after the first, and leading one leads trump.
If you can follow the suit that was led, you must, and you cannot play a trump instead. When trump is led, you must play a trump if you hold one, and the jokers count as trump.
A joker wins a trick only when no other trump is in it, so play one onto a trick your side is already winning, or lead it once the other trumps are gone. Hold one too long and you may have to play it into a trick somebody else wins, and its point goes with it.
Scoring a hand
Six points are available each hand:
- High
- Low
- Jack of trump
- Big joker
- Little joker
- Game
High goes to whoever takes the highest trump in play, and Low to whoever plays the lowest. Jack goes to whoever takes the jack of trump, and each joker is a point for whoever takes it. The jokers never count as High or Low.
Game goes to whoever takes the most points in counting cards. If two players tie for Game, nobody gets it.
Counting for Game: 10 = 10 points · Ace = 4 · King = 3 · Queen = 2 · Jack = 1
The sleepers stay face down until the hand is over, and any point among them belongs to nobody. If a joker is asleep, only five points exist that hand, so a bid of 6 cannot be made.
If the bidder's side takes fewer points than it bid, it goes set: its score drops by the amount of the bid, and it scores nothing else that hand. Everyone else keeps what they took. Scores can go below zero.
A game is played to 21. If the bidder's side and another side both reach it on the same hand, the bidder's side wins.
A bid of three, played out
Four players, partners off, so six cards are asleep and the deck runs 8 to ace. You pick up the ace, jack and 9 of hearts, the king of spades, the 10 of clubs and the little joker.
Count what you can promise if hearts are trump. The ace takes High on its own, because nothing outranks it. The jack is a point if nobody catches it with the queen or king. The 10 of clubs is worth 10 toward Game if it ends up in a trick you take. The little joker is a point you will have to place. A bid of 3 feels reasonable. Ayşe passes, Kemal bids 2, you bid 3, and Sam passes.
You lead the ace of hearts, so hearts are trump. Trump was led, so everyone holding a heart has to play one. Kemal gives up the queen. Sam has to play the 8, the lowest heart at a four-player table. Ayşe has no hearts and throws the 10 of diamonds. One trick, and it holds High and 16 points toward Game: 4 for the ace, 2 for the queen and 10 for the ten. The 8 is Low, and that point is Sam's, because Sam played it.
On the third trick you lead the jack of hearts and Sam takes it with the king, so Jack goes to Sam. By the fifth, every heart is gone. You lead the little joker, which leads trump, nobody has a trump to play, and the joker takes the trick as the only trump in it.
Your tricks hold the most counting cards, so Game is yours as well. You took High, the little joker and Game: 3 points on a bid of 3. Then the sleepers turn over, and the big joker was among them all along. Only five points ever existed this hand, and a bid of 6 would have been set before the first card was played.
Bidding and playing better
Build your bid around the points your hand can realistically take. High is secure if you hold the ace of the suit you plan to lead. The jack is safer when you hold higher trumps too. Game often depends on who takes the most 10s, since each 10 is worth as much as an ace, king, queen and jack combined.
Lead your best trump first. Everyone has to follow with trump, so your ace drags anything worth points toward Game into your trick. Low is different: it stays with whoever plays the lowest trump, wherever that card lands.
Play jokers late. A joker takes a trick only when it is the only trump in it, so lead it once the trump has gone, or drop it on a trick your partner is already winning.
Bid with the sleepers in mind. At four players any given card is asleep one time in five, so a bid of 5 or 6 needs a hand that does not lean on a single card.
With partners, feed your partner's tricks. When your partner won the bid and is taking the trick, a 10 thrown onto it is ten points toward Game for your side.
When a rival is close to 21, take the bid off them. If you both reach 21 on the same hand, the bidder wins.