Learn to Play Sheepshead
If you have never played sheepshead, welcome. This is the slow on-ramp. We will go one idea at a time, and by the end you will be able to sit down and play your first hand without anyone groaning at you. The faster reference is on the rules page, but stay here first.
What sheepshead is
Sheepshead is Wisconsin's card game, born in the German taverns of the Midwest and still played every night at kitchen tables and bar tops from Milwaukee to the Iron Range. It is a trick-taking game, which means each round everyone throws one card and the best card wins the pile. You play those piles, called tricks, to collect points.
What makes it special is that it is not everyone for themselves. Most hands, one player becomes the picker and takes on the whole table, usually with one secret partner. The picker and partner are one side; the other three players are the defenders. The picking side needs 61 of the 120 points in the deck to win. The defenders win with 60. Ties go to the defenders, so the picker is always reaching.
The 32-card deck
Sheepshead uses a short deck: just A, 10, K, Q, J, 9, 8, 7 in each of the four suits. No twos through sixes. Only some cards are worth points, and this is worth memorizing on day one:
| Card | Points |
|---|---|
| Ace | 11 |
| Ten | 10 |
| King | 4 |
| Queen | 3 |
| Jack | 2 |
| 9, 8, 7 | 0 |
Four suits times those values lands at 120 points total. Notice the ace and ten are the heavy hitters at 11 and 10. The whole game is a quiet fight over where the aces and tens end up.
The trump order, explained gently
Here is the part that trips up every newcomer, so go slowly. In most card games the suits are equal and each suit ranks ace down to seven. Sheepshead is different. Fourteen cards are pulled out and made into one big super-suit called trump. A trump card beats any plain card, no matter the points.
Which fourteen? It is easier than it looks:
- All four queens are trump, and they are the four highest cards in the game.
- All four jacks are trump, ranking just under the queens.
- Every diamond is trump: the A♦, 10♦, K♦, 9♦, 8♦, 7♦.
Inside the queens and jacks, the suit order is always the same: clubs, spades, hearts, diamonds. So the very best card in sheepshead is the Q♣, the queen of clubs. It beats everything. Nothing beats it, ever. After the queens come the jacks in the same club-spade-heart-diamond order, then the diamonds from ace down to seven. From the top:
Q♣ Q♠ Q♥ Q♦ J♣ J♠ J♥ J♦ A♦ 10♦ K♦ 9♦ 8♦ 7♦
The three suits left over, clubs, spades, and hearts, are called fail (sometimes "off"). Their queens and jacks have already left for trump, so a fail suit is just A, 10, K, 9, 8, 7. Fail cards can never beat a trump. The one rule to drill in: the J♣ is not a club, it is trump. A jack or queen always travels with trump, never with its printed suit.
Your first hand, step by step
- The deal. Everyone gets six cards, and two cards go face down in the middle. Those two are the blind.
- Count your trump. Before anything else, count how many of your six cards are trump (any queen, any jack, any diamond). This number, not your points, decides what you do next.
- Pick or pass. Going around starting left of the dealer, each player chooses to pick up the blind or pass. Picking means you are taking on the table and promising to reach 61. With four or more trump and a queen or two, picking is reasonable. With one or two trump, pass and let someone else sweat. There is no shame in passing.
- The blind. Whoever picks turns over the two blind cards and adds them to their hand, now holding eight.
- Burying. The picker then chooses two cards to set face down: the bury. Those buried cards count as points for the picking side at the end. Bury points you cannot protect, and bury a fail suit you would rather not be stuck following. Never bury trump.
- Following suit. Now you play. The first player leads a card. Everyone must follow suit if they can: if a fail club is led you must play a club, if trump is led you must play trump. Remember all trump counts as one suit. Only if you are out of the led suit may you play something else.
- Win tricks, gather points. Highest card takes the trick. Scoop your aces and tens onto piles your side is winning. Count to 61 and you have won.
For the exact partner rules, doubling, and scoring multipliers, the rules page lays them out. Words you do not recognize are all defined on the glossary.
The three mistakes every beginner makes
- Forgetting that jacks and queens are trump. You will look at the J♥ and think you have a heart to follow with. You do not. It is trump. Treat your queens and jacks as trump from the second you pick up your hand and you will avoid your worst early blunders.
- Not schmearing your partner. When your side is winning a trick, throw your fat cards (aces and tens) onto it. That is called schmearing, and it is how the picking side actually reaches 61. New players hoard their aces and lose by five points. Give the points to your own side.
- Picking on points instead of trump. A hand full of aces and tens looks strong, but if it has no trump you cannot win tricks with it. Picking strength comes from trump count and queen quality, not from points. Count your trump first, every time.
Ready to deal?
That is enough to play. The fastest way to learn is to play a few hands, and you do not need an account or another human to start. Sit down at a table with computer players right here at Schmear, take a few hands at your own pace, and when it clicks, pull up a chair at a live table with real people. Then come back and schmear something.
Next: sharpen up with strategy, or skim the variants to see the different ways the game is dealt.