Description

41 (or Forty-One) is a traditional card game commonly played in Syria and Lebanon. It is a partnership trick-taking game, in the same family as Whist and Boston, with a substantial difference from most such games: players bid and score individually.

Bidding and play is counter-clockwise, and traditionally trumps are always Hearts. In turn, each player bids a number of tricks they expect to take. The dealer, who bids last, can potentially cause the hand to be re-dealt by the next player if the total bid score count is less than 11. Play is as in most trick-taking games: match suit if possible, otherwise trump if desired or throw off; highest card of the suit led wins, unless trump is played, in which case highest trump wins, and winner leads to the next trick.

A player scores a number of points equal to their bid if they get at least that many tricks on their own (so 3 points for bidding 3 and winning 3 or more tricks), and loses that many points if they fail to get their bid (so -3 points for bidding 3 and winning 2 or fewer tricks). A bid of 7 or above is for double stakes (14/-14 for 7, 16/-16 for 8) and guarantees that the hand is played.

The winning partnership is the first to have a player reach at least 41 with their partner's score above 0.