500 or not, here we come

500 is a common Australian card game.  If you don't enjoy cards, you might as well skip this post.  If you do enjoy cards but don't enjoy travel writing, this may well be the only post you enjoy.  If that's the case, I'm not quite sure why you're still reading (presumably your wife is insisting on it), but, either way, knock yourself out.  Game on!

The first step to playing 500 is assembling four -- not three, not five, not two, not six, but four -- players.  (Okay, technically you can make it work with three or five or six, but it's far from ideal.)  This is quite possibly the hardest step, but once you have managed to coordinate four (not five, not three) schedules to coincide precisely (it's probably easier just to happen to find yourself surrounded by three others at any one time than to actually have this event ever transpire), you are set.  Hope everyone likes cards.

500 is played with 43 cards -- 4s and up in red suits; 5s and up in black suits; and one joker.  Partners sit opposite each other and each player receives 10 cards.  Three are left in the kitty.  Cards are usually dealt semi-euchre-style (indeed, 500 is basically a more complicated version of euchre) with each player receiving first three, then four, then three.

Left of dealer opens the bidding, the lowest possible call of which is 6 of any suit.  (You're bidding on how many tricks out of 10 your partnership can win; 5 being 50-50 is moot.)  The suits also have a hierarchy:  hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades.  No trump ranks higher than hearts.  Thus, six spades is the lowest call possible.  After, say, a seven diamonds call, though, it would be impossible to call seven clubs seeing as clubs are lower than diamonds.  You'd have to go eight clubs or something different.

Points correspond to bids -- 40 points for six spades and add 20 for each suit (i.e., six clubs is 60, six diamonds is 80) and 100 points for each number (i.e., seven spades is 140, seven clubs is 160).  Ten no trump is 520, which is very clearly game.  The game is won when one partnership makes it to 500 or the other partnership makes it to -500.

Being well acquainted with euchre but reasonably new to 500, I'll admit my grasp is less complete than it could be.  Case in point:  misere (pronounced "miz-air").  I know it means you have to lose everything and is the most impressive maneouver you can make in 500 except for open misere, which is the thing to brag about (it's where, after the first trick, you have to lay your cards on the table), but there's several complications regarding it that I haven't quite come to terms with. One further case in point:  the joker if no trumps are called.  Just plain complicated.  I generally trust whoever I'm playing with to enact these rules fairly.  It's a big call, but at the moment it's the only choice I've got.  You either, come to think of it.

Once the bidding finishes (after all but one pass), whoever makes the bid gets the cards in the kitty and exchanges them for three of their own cards and begins play.

Play follows clockwise and everyone must follow suit.  This next bit is probably the most important.  Easy peasy if you play euchre; completely crazy if you don't:  the jacks are high.  More specifically, the jack of the trump suit and the jack of the suit of the same color are high.  (The jacks of the other suit fall in their order normally between queens and 10s.)  For example, if hearts are trump, the joker is the best card, then the jack of hearts is the next best card (the right bower) and the jack of diamonds is the next best card (the left bower).  The jacks of spades and clubs are normal.

It's crucial to remember that the joker is the highest card in the entire deck and is considered a trump card, as is the left bower.  Don't know how to stress that further, but don't forget:  joker and left bower are both trump!

Unlike pinochle, you do not have to trump if you don't want to, unless of course trump was led and you're following suit.

Play continues until all ten tricks have been played and points (or subtractions if necessary) are awarded accordingly until 500 is reached.

It's tons of fun and though much of it is like euchre, I have never yet seen a 500er milk the cow while in the barn.  Alas.