How to play 3-2-5

Three players compete individually. The entire 30-card deck is dealt out, ten to each player, meaning every hand consists of exactly ten tricks with no hidden stock.

Instead of an auction, your target is determined by your seat: five, three, or two tricks. Since these targets perfectly sum to ten, every trick won above your quota forces another player below theirs.

Exceeding your target achieves two things: it scores points, and crucially, it grants you the right to blindly draw a card from a failing player's hand before the next round begins. The tricks are simply the currency used to earn this advantage.

Thirty cards, because three hands of ten are thirty. Take a full pack, throw out everything from the two to the six, and then throw out two of the four sevens. The two that stay are the heart and the spade.

The ranking is plain and the ace is high. Ace, king, queen, jack, ten, nine, eight, and then the seven at the bottom of the two suits that have one.

There are no card points here and no trick is worth more than another. A trick is a trick and ten of them make a hand. Read that twice if you have come from 28 or 29, because those games sit in the same family and put the jack above the nine above the ace. None of that is true at this table.

The two orphan sevens have a rule attached that some tables play and some do not. This app leaves it off, so a seven is the lowest card of its own suit and nothing more. The settings further down say what turning it on does.

The number belongs to the chair. The seat next along from the dealer has to take five tricks, the one after that has to take three, and the dealer has to take two.

The five seat carries the work. It names the trump, it is dealt to first, it leads the opening trick, and then it has to find five of the ten. The dealer has the quiet chair: two tricks, no trump to name, and the last card to the first trick.

The deal moves one seat after every hand and the numbers move with it. Whoever was on five deals next and drops to two, the dealer climbs to three, and the three climbs to five. Three hands and everybody has carried all three.

That is why a match here is always a multiple of three hands. Stop after four and one player has held the five seat twice while somebody else held it once, so the totals at the bottom would be measuring the chairs rather than the players.

1. Shuffle the thirty and deal five cards to each player, starting with the seat on five.
2. That player looks at their five and names a trump suit out loud. There is no auction and nobody else gets a say.
3. Or they decline and turn the next three face up for the table to see. The highest of the three names the trump and all three go into their hand. If two of them tie on rank, the chooser picks between the tied suits.
4. Then the rest goes out, three cards each and then two, and everybody is holding ten.

Naming a trump on five cards and playing the hand with ten is the gamble this deal is built around. Half of what you will hold is still in the pack when you have to choose. That is why the packets are five, three and two rather than ten at once, and it is where the game gets its name.

The seat that names the trump is always the seat that has to take five. It is never handed to somebody who wants it less, and it comes round to everybody in turn.

Turning three over is a real option and it costs something real. The whole table sees three of your cards, and the suit you end up with is whichever of the three happens to be highest. Worth it on a flat five with no suit in it. Expensive on a hand you could have named.

The other two players see the trump before they see their own last five cards, which is the one small advantage their chair hands them.

The seat on five leads the first trick and may lead anything at all. After that, whoever took the last trick leads the next.

Follow the suit that was led if you hold it. If you do not hold it, play whatever you like.

Nothing else is forced. You never have to trump and you never have to beat what is already down. Throwing a king away on a trick you have lost is an ordinary play here, and against two players who are counting it is sometimes the only sensible one.

The highest trump takes the trick. If nobody trumped, the highest card of the suit led takes it. Ten tricks and the hand is done.

Keep your tricks where the other two can count them. Everybody is meant to know everybody's running count against their number, because that is what the whole of the play is decided on.

This is the game. Everything above it is ordinary trick play, and this is the reason people keep dealing.

Beat your number and you take a card out of the hand of a player who missed theirs. One card for every trick you were over, and one for every trick they were under. The two sides always match, because the numbers add up to the tricks, so nobody is ever left holding a debt that cannot be paid.

1. The hand ends and the scores go down. Nothing changes hands yet.
2. The next hand is dealt, all ten cards each.
3. The trump for that hand is named.
4. Now the debts are paid, and only then does anybody lead.

That order is the cruel part and it is worth reading again. The player naming the trump does it without knowing which cards they are about to lose or gain. A hand worth five tricks when it was dealt can be hollowed out before a card is played, and a poor one can be handed an ace.

The player who fell short fans their ten cards face down and holds them out. The player who is owed takes one without seeing it, puts it in their hand, and then picks one of their eleven to hand back face down.

Two kinds of card may not go back. Not the one just drawn, and not a card from a suit you would be left with fewer than two of. So the card you give has to come out of a holding of three or more, and nobody can empty a short suit to build themselves somewhere to trump from.

Both players in the exchange see both cards. The third sees neither, and only knows that something went one way and something came back. Everybody is still holding ten when it is over.

When more than one debt is owed, the order is fixed rather than argued about. The players who are owed draw in play order starting from the seat on five, and the hands they draw from come up starting with the dealer's.

There is no exchange in the first hand of a match, and none after a hand where all three took their number exactly. The most that can ever move is eight cards, which is the dealer taking all ten tricks against a target of two.