Oh hell
card game
Oh hell or contract whist is a trick-taking card game of British origin in which the object is to take exactly the number of tricks bid. It was first described by B. C. Westall around 1930 and originally called oh! well. It was said to have been introduced into America via the New York clubs in 1931. Phillips and Westall describe it as "one of the best round games".
Name
This English game was originally called oh! well, but is often known as contract whist in Britain and, less commonly, as nomination whist, while American sources call it oh pshaw or more frequently oh hell. David Parlett gives other names: blackout, bust, elevator and jungle bridge; while John McLeod adds blob, so called because the player's predicted bid is overwritten with a black blob if not achieved.
Concept
The game explores the idea of taking an exact number of tricks specified by a bid after the deal. Although the original game was played to 100 points, the modern variants differ from other trick-taking games in that players play a fixed number of deals.
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This entry incorporates text from “Oh hell” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.