About Free Printable Whist Rules
Free printable Whist rules — how to play the classic 4-player partnership trick-taking card game. Trump suit, odd tricks, honours, rubber bonus. Color or B&W.
How to use
- Choose your print style. Full color uses a warm leather-brown accent and red-and-black suit symbols — a fitting reference card for the parlour table. Ink-saver (black & white) switches to a clean grayscale layout for an economical classroom or club-night handout.
- Choose whether to show diagrams. Diagrams on (the default) include a card-rank strip with the honours highlighted, a seating diagram showing partners across the table, the dealer with the face-up trump card, and a worked example of a trick where a trump wins. Switch to text only for the most compact, fewest-pages version.
- Read the preview to confirm the layout — rules flow from the objective and setup, through card ranking, the deal and trump card, the play of a hand (follow suit, renounce, trick winner), the seven special rules, the full scoring grid, winning the game and rubber, and common variants (Bid Whist, Solo Whist, Knock-Out Whist).
- Click Print Rules to send it to your printer or save it as a PDF. The illustrated guide prints cleanly across a few standard letter or A4 pages; choose text only for a compact summary.
Frequently asked questions
How many players do you need for Whist?
Whist is played by exactly 4 players in 2 fixed partnerships of 2. Partners sit directly across the table from each other and stay paired for the whole rubber. North-South typically form one partnership and East-West the other. Whist is fundamentally a partnership game; if you have 4 but want each person playing for themselves, look at Solo Whist instead, or try the casual Knock-Out Whist variant which works for 2 to 7.
How is the trump suit decided in Whist?
The trump suit is decided by the deal itself, not by a bid. After dealing 13 cards to each player one at a time, the dealer places their final (52nd) card face up on the table. The suit of that card is the trump suit for the entire hand. The card remains face up so every player can see it while they plan their first trick; the dealer only takes it into their hand when it is their turn to play to the first trick. No bidding, no negotiation — the deck decides.
What is an 'odd trick' and how is it scored?
An odd trick is any trick a partnership wins beyond the first six. The first six tricks a side takes are called the 'book' and score nothing. Every trick after that scores 1 point. So if your side wins 8 tricks and the opponents win 5, you score 8 − 6 = 2 points (your two odd tricks). The first partnership to reach the target game score — traditionally 5 in British Short Whist, or 7 in American Whist — wins the game.
What are honours in Whist?
The honours are the four top cards of the trump suit — the A, K, Q, and J of trumps. If a single partnership is dealt all four between them, they score 4 bonus points; any three of the four scores 2 bonus points. Honours are claimed and announced before the next deal. Many modern players skip honours scoring entirely for a simpler game.
What is a rubber in Whist?
A rubber is a best-of-three contest. The first partnership to win two games wins the rubber and gets a 2-point rubber bonus. If one side wins the first two games in a row, there is no third game — they have already won the rubber. The overall winner of the rubber is the partnership with the higher total points across all games and bonuses.
What other printable game rules do you have?
Whist sits alongside a growing collection of free printable game-rule sheets —
Contract Bridge,
Hearts,
Euchre,
Spades,
Chess, Cribbage, Poker, and many more classic public-domain games. See the
printables hub for the full library of rule sheets, worksheets, charts, and planners.
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