Barbu: which scoring table? How to balance the five contracts

What there is to count

The five contracts of the short version hand out penalties on fixed quantities: 13 tricks, 13 hearts, 4 queens and 1 Barbu (the king of hearts). The salad combines all four. A scoring table is therefore four numbers: the price of a trick, a heart, a queen and the Barbu. Multiplied by these quantities, they give the total of each contract, and that total is what you have to look at to know whether the scoring table is balanced.

Three scoring tables compared

The classic table gives the most weight to the queens (100) and the Barbu (80), and almost none to the tricks (26): the “no tricks” contract becomes a formality, and the game is decided on the queens. The equal-weight table puts all four contracts around 100: every deal counts the same, and the salad, worth 408, weighs exactly as much as the four contracts put together. The simplified table can be worked out in your head and suits children; the Barbu is only worth 10 there, which takes the dread out of the king of hearts.

The question of the Barbu

The Barbu is a single card: whoever collects it takes the whole contract, the other three nothing. With a Barbu at 80 or 100, one game in two is decided on that card. If that seems too much, two remedies: lower the Barbu (40 or 50 in the classic table, which brings the contract down to the level of the tricks), or play the variant where the ace of hearts counts double in the “no hearts” contract, to give the hearts back some weight against the Barbu. In every case, the Barbu is still a heart: in the salad, the king of hearts is worth the Barbu plus a heart (85 in the classic table).

The check totals

Whatever the scoring table, each line of the sheet has a fixed total, and it is the only way to check a deal once the cards have been gathered up. In the classic table: 26 for the tricks, 65 for the hearts, 100 for the queens, 80 for the Barbu and 271 for the salad. Write these totals in the margin of the score sheet before you start; the site’s counter works them out from the scoring table you enter and refuses to confirm a round whose sum is wrong.

The long version: twenty deals

In the full version, each player in turn chooses a contract they have not yet chosen, and you play until everyone has done all five: twenty deals with four players. The dealer chooses the contract after seeing their cards, which adds a real decision (you keep the salad for a safe hand, you choose “no Barbu” when you hold it). The scoring table doesn’t change, but the relative weight of the contracts matters even more: with a classic table, whoever holds good hands four times on “no queens” gains a lead that is hard to claw back. It is for this version that the equal-weight table was designed.

Competition Barbu adds positive contracts (dominoes, last tricks) and is played with seven contracts; its scoring table is fixed by the tournament rules, and it is not the subject of this page.

Frequently asked questions