Joker (jokeri, or jokri as most Georgians say at home) is a Georgian card game for four players; it shares nothing with the film but the name. Everyone plays for themselves, and every hand comes down to one thing: say in advance how many tricks you will take, then take exactly that many. The rules below are the ones the Joker on tamashebi.cc plays by. Home tables often differ in the details, and where they do, we point it out.
The deck, the deal and trumps
Joker uses a 36-card deck: 6 up to ace in all four suits, which Georgians call yvavi (spades, ♠), jvari (clubs, ♣), aguri (diamonds, ♦) and guli (hearts, ♥). The two black sixes, the 6 of spades and the 6 of clubs, are taken out and two jokers take their place; the red sixes stay in. So the game has 34 ordinary cards and 2 jokers, still 36 in all. Card rank, from high to low: ace, king, queen, jack, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6. The joker has no place in that order: what it does is announced by its owner each time it is played. A standard game has 24 hands, split into four pulkas (a pulka is a block of hands that is scored together), and the deal passes clockwise after every hand:
- Pulka I: eight hands of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 cards each.
- Pulka II: four hands of 9 cards each.
- Pulka III: eight hands going back down: 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 card.
- Pulka IV: four more nine-card hands.
- The tskhrianebi variant (the "nines"): 16 hands, all of nine cards, again in four pulkas.
In hands of 1 to 8 cards, the next card of the deck is turned face up after the deal, and its suit is trumps for that hand. If the turned card is a joker, the hand is played without trumps; this is called bezi (no-trump). In a nine-card hand the four players receive the whole deck, so nothing is left to turn up. Instead, everyone first gets three cards; the player to the dealer’s left looks at those three and names trumps (one of the four suits, or bezi), and only then are the other six cards dealt. The trump suit or bezi stays visible on the table for the whole hand.
Bidding and play
After the deal, each player in turn, starting left of the dealer and going clockwise, says how many tricks they will take: anything from zero up to the number of cards in the hand. Bidding zero is a pass (pasi), a promise not to take a single trick; on the site the button is labelled "pass" too. The fourth and last bidder is barred from one number: the one that would make the four bids add up exactly to the number of tricks. For example, in a nine-card hand the first three bid 2, 2 and 3, a total of 7, so the last player cannot bid 2, because 7 + 2 = 9. If the earlier bids already add up to more than the number of cards, there is no barred number. Because of this rule, in every hand someone is bound to miss their bid. On the site the barred button is greyed out, and the server would refuse that bid anyway. Once bidding is done, play begins:
- The player to the dealer’s left leads to the first trick; whoever wins a trick leads to the next. You may lead any card.
- If you hold the suit that was led, you must follow suit, with any card of that suit.
- If you have none of that suit but hold a trump, you must trump, with any trump, not necessarily a high one.
- If you have neither, you may play any card.
- A joker is always allowed: you may play it even when you hold the suit led or a trump.
- The trick goes to the highest trump, or, if nobody played a trump, to the highest card of the suit led. A card of another suit that was simply thrown away can never win the trick.
The joker: playing it high or low
- Mojokvra (playing the joker high): the joker takes the trick and beats any card, including the ace of trumps. Older notes call this "maghla" (high).
- Gataneba (playing the joker low): the joker gives the trick away. It cannot win, and the trick is decided among the other cards as if the joker were not there. Older notes call this "dabla" (low).
- Two jokers in one trick: if both are played high, the second one, played later, wins; it is the answer to the first. A joker played high always beats a joker played low.
- Leading with a joker: whoever leads a joker also names a suit. When it is led high (the call is "maghali", high), players holding that suit must play their highest card of it. When it is led low (the call is "tsaighos", let it take), you must follow with that suit but may play any card of it; you are not required to play your lowest. A player without the named suit must trump with any trump, and with no trump either may play any card.
- A rare case: if a joker is led low and nobody follows the named suit, nobody trumps and the second joker is not played high, the trick stays with the player who led.
Scoring in brief
- Bid made exactly: (bid + 1) × 50. Bidding two and taking two is worth 150.
- You bid every trick in the hand and took them all: bid × 100. Nine of nine is 900, four of four is 400.
- A successful pass (bid zero, took zero): 50 points.
- Bid missed, whether you took more or fewer: 10 points for every trick you took.
- Khishti (the penalty for failing a bid): you bid one or more and took none. The penalty depends on the table rule: 200, 500, or 100 per card in the hand.
- At the end of a pulka come premia and moshla: whoever made every hand of the pulka exactly gets the score of their best hand added once more (the premia, a bonus), and the others, as a rule, have the score of their own best hand taken away (the moshla).
A worked example: a three-card hand
It is the third hand of the first pulka, and everyone holds three cards. Nika is dealing, so Giorgi bids and leads first, followed by Ana, Levan and Nika. The turned card is the 10 of diamonds, so diamonds are trumps. Giorgi holds the ace of spades, the king of hearts and the 7 of clubs; Ana the 8 of spades, the 9 of hearts and the jack of clubs; Levan a joker, the queen of spades and the 6 of hearts; Nika the 10 of spades, the 8 of clubs and the 9 of diamonds, the only trump at the table. Bidding: Giorgi bids 1, Ana passes, Levan bids 1. The total is 2, so Nika may not bid 1 (2 + 1 = 3), and he passes. The bids add up to 2 against three tricks: one trick is spare, and somebody is bound to take it.
- Giorgi leads the ace of spades. Everyone has a spade and follows: Ana the 8, Levan the queen, Nika the 10. The trick is Giorgi’s.
- Giorgi leads the king of hearts. Ana plays the 9 of hearts. Levan plays the joker high. Nika has no hearts but does have a trump, so he must trump with the 9 of diamonds, but the joker beats even a trump. The trick is Levan’s.
- Levan leads the 6 of hearts. Nobody has hearts left, and nobody has a trump: Nika throws the 8 of clubs, Giorgi the 7 of clubs, Ana the jack of clubs. Thrown cards cannot win, so the little 6 of hearts takes it. The trick is Levan’s again.
The result: Giorgi bid 1 and took 1, for 100 points. Ana and Nika both made their passes, 50 each. Levan bid 1 and took 2, so he missed his bid and scores 20 for his two tricks. The lesson: Levan was left with his only heart at the end, and had he kept track of who had run out of which suit, he would have known that six was certain to win a trick. It works the other way too: had he played the 6 of hearts in the second trick instead of the joker, or played the joker low, Nika’s 9 of diamonds would have taken the trick (a trump beats the king of hearts) and Nika’s pass would have failed. In Joker nearly every card you play makes or breaks someone else’s bid.
Frequently asked questions
- How many players does Joker need?
- Exactly four, each playing for themselves; it is not played in pairs. There is a separate two-player version, Japanese Joker (iaponuri jokeri).
- Which cards do the jokers replace?
- The two black sixes, the 6 of spades and the 6 of clubs. The red sixes stay in, so the deck is still 36 cards.
- What happens if a joker is turned up for trumps?
- The hand is played without trumps, as bezi. In a nine-card hand, the player to the dealer’s left chooses trumps or bezi after seeing three cards.
- Do I have to play the joker if I cannot follow suit?
- No. If you have no card of the suit led, you must trump; you may always play a joker instead, but you are never obliged to.
- Why can’t I bid certain numbers when I bid last?
- The last bidder may not bid the number that would make the bids add up to the number of tricks. It is the usual rule in Georgian Joker: not everyone can make their bid at once.
Joker on tamashebi.cc is free and plays in the browser, on a phone too. Domino Coin is a virtual in-game coin: it is never money, cannot be bought or cashed out, and means nothing outside the site. The site is available in Georgian, English, Russian and Turkish.
The games on Tamashebi.cc are played in a Georgian-language interface. They are free and use a virtual coin, never real money.