Coinche

Coinche

A Belote of Clubs
Origin	France
Type	Trick-taking
Players	2-4
Skill(s) required	Skilful
Age range	8-80
Cards	32
Deck	Piquet deck
Play	Counter-clockwise
Card rank (highest to lowest)	A 10 K Q J 9 8 7 (Suit) J 9 A 10 K Q 8 7 (Trump)
Playing time	30 min.
Related games
Belote, Klaverjas, Jass

Coinche also named belote coinchée is a variant of the French belote.

Game rules are the same, the only differences are how cards are dealt and how trumps are chosen..

Like most popular games, coinche rules may differ from a geographic area to another.

Dealing

The deck is never shuffled, but rather cut by the player who precedes the dealer, except for the first dealing in a game when the dealer's partner does that. The first dealing in a game is done by the winners from the previous game. At least three cards must be cut. The cards are dealt counter-clockwise starting from the dealer's successor (to his/her right), each player receives three packets of cards, two of them count three cards and the other two cards. The order in which the packets are dealt is not specified, it could be (3,2,3), (2,3,3) or (3,3,2).

Bidding

The player at the right of the dealer starts the biddings, the goal here is to choose the trumps.

Each player can :

• Pass (it does not prevent him from bidding latter) ;
• Make a contract including a card suit and the number of point he must do, for example : 100 Clubs.

Card Suits are the same as in belote :

• Hearts
• Diamonds
• Clubs
• Spades

All trumps and No trumps are added.

Biddings start at least at 80 points, which is about half of the total points (162), and are made by steps of 10 (80, 90, 100, ...). If a contract as already been made by another player, the new contract must be at least 10 points higher.

An important rule of the game is the possibility of "coincher": when player A makes a contract, if player B thinks player A wil not make it, then B can say "coinché" as long as no newer contracts are made. In this case the winning team points are doubled. In the same way A can "sur-coincher", points will then be quadrupled.

Biddings end by one of those 2 cases :

• every player in a row passed (one player can not bid higher than himself except if he changes the suit);
• on player has "coinché".