How to Play Tarneeb
The Levant's great partnership game — bid boldly, name your trump, and play to the right.
Play Tarneeb freeTarneeb — the word simply means "trump" — is the coffee-house classic of Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Egypt: two partnerships, one bold bid, and a whole hand to prove it. Every deal opens with a small auction of nerve, and the winner names the trump suit for all to hear — nothing hidden here.
What you need
- 4 players in two partnerships — partners sit opposite.
- A standard 52-card deck, 13 cards each, normal ranking with aces high.
- Play moves counter-clockwise — to the right, the traditional direction of the region's games. The auction and the first lead start at the dealer's right.
Bidding — 7 to 13
- Each player in turn bids the number of tricks their team will win — 7 to 13 — or passes. Each bid must beat the standing one; passing removes you from that hand's auction.
- Three passes end the auction. If all four pass, the hand is thrown in and redealt by the same dealer.
- The winner names the tarneeb — the trump suit, public immediately — and leads the first trick.
Reading a Tarneeb hand: length is power. Five or six cards of one suit with a couple of honours is a classic 7–8 bid; a near-solid seven-card suit tempts the famous 13 — glory if it lands, a story told against you for years if it doesn't.
Playing a trick
- Follow the led suit if you can.
- Void? Play anything — trumping is optional and discarding is allowed. Tarneeb has the loosest play rules in the family; all the discipline lives in the bid.
- Highest trump wins; with no trump in the trick, the highest card of the led suit. The winner leads next — to the right.
Scoring — the race to 41
| Result | Bidding team | Defenders |
|---|---|---|
| Bid made (tricks ≥ bid) | + tricks actually won | 0 |
| Bid failed | − bid | + their tricks |
| Kaboot — all 13 taken (bid under 13) | +16 | 0 |
| Bid 13, made | +26 | 0 |
| Bid 13, failed | −16 | double their tricks |
First team to 41 points wins (31 and 61 are house presets). Scores can go negative — there is no floor, and no mercy.
Strategy — first principles
- Bid your long suit, not your high cards. Trumps win by exhaustion — length beats honours.
- Draw trumps early as the bidder: two rounds of trump leads strip the defence bare.
- Signal with discards. With play this free, every throwaway card tells your partner a story.
- Defend by counting to seven. The bid team needs a majority; early stolen tricks double in value late.
Frequently asked questions
Why counter-clockwise?
It's the traditional direction of play across the region. Everything else is familiar — just pass the lead to your right.
Must I trump when I'm void?
No — unlike Call Break, trumping is entirely optional. You may discard anything.
What is kaboot?
Taking all thirteen tricks. On a bid under 13 it scores 16; a made bid OF 13 scores 26 — and a failed 13 costs 16 while the defenders double their tricks.
What if everyone passes?
The hand is thrown in and the same dealer redeals.
Are there no-trump bids?
Not in this version — the Egyptian variant adds them, and it may arrive later as an option.
Is Tarneeb related to Whist or Spades?
All Whist descendants. Tarneeb's identity is the public chosen trump and the team bid — closest to classic auction Whist.
What does tarneeb mean?
Tarneeb (طرنيب) is the Arabic word for trump. The game is named after its central act: the winning bidder names a suit, and that suit outranks the other three for the whole hand.
What is the minimum bid in Tarneeb?
Seven. You are promising your side will take at least seven of the thirteen tricks, and each later bid must be higher, up to thirteen. Everyone may pass instead, in which case the hand is redealt.
Is Tarneeb 41 the same game?
No. Tarneeb 41 is a separate card-point game for four individual players where you bid on the value of the cards you take. The game on this page is Tarneeb 63, the partnership trick-bidding version.
How many points do you need to win Tarneeb?
41 points. A made bid scores the tricks taken, so a side usually needs four to six hands to get there.
Glossary
- Tarneeb
- The trump suit — and the name of the game.
- Kaboot
- Sweeping all thirteen tricks.
- Drawing trumps
- Leading trumps to strip the defenders.
- The 41
- The classic match target (31 and 61 as presets).
Keep reading
- Tarneeb Strategy — bidding judgment, trump play and defending for the set.
- Tarneeb 41, 31 & 61 — targets, kaboot payouts and regional variants.
- قواعد الطرنيب بالعربية — the full rules in Arabic.
- Tarneeb Scoring — kaboot and the race to 41.