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Printable Oh Hell score sheet

Call it Oh Hell, Oh Heck, or Up and Down the River — the bid-exactly game deserves a pad with the deal sizes printed. Nineteen rounds down the river and back, bid and score boxes for six, and both common scoring systems to tick before the first deal.

Wizard score sheet → Prints on one page — US Letter or A4. Save as PDF from the print dialog.

Oh Hell

a.k.a. Up and Down the River · Oh Heck · 3–7 players
Bid the exact tricks you’ll take · trump turns after the deal
Bid & score — 10 cards down to 1 and back up. Playing 7–1–7? Start at the row marked 7.
RdCardsP1P2P3P4P5P6
bidscorebidscorebidscorebidscorebidscorebidscore
110
29
38
47
56
65
74
83
92
101
112
123
134
145
156
167
178
189
1910

Scoring — tick ONE system before the game

  • ☐ Exact bids only: make your bid exactly — score 10 + 1 per trick taken. Miss — score 0
  • ☐ Everyone counts: 1 per trick for all, and exact bids add a +10 bonus
  • The last player to bid may not bring total bids equal to the tricks available (the "hook")
  • Highest total after the last round wins
Deal patterns vary as much as the name: 10-1-10 (Up and Down the River), 7-1-7, one-way climbs, and fixed deals are all out there. The Cards column covers 10-1-10; strike rows or renumber for your pattern.
Limestone Games Oh Hell score sheet · free printable · limestonegames.com/printables/

How to play Oh Hell

Each round you're dealt the number of cards printed in the Cards column, the next card turns up to set trump, and everyone bids — out loud, in turn — exactly how many tricks they'll take. Then the hand is played out under ordinary trick-taking rules: follow suit if you can, highest of the suit led wins unless trumped. The cruelty is structural: the dealer bids last and is barred from making the bids add up to the tricks available, so every round is built to break at least one player's plan.

Down the river and back

The full journey deals ten cards, then nine, down to a single-card round of pure nerve, then climbs back to ten — nineteen rounds. Playing the shorter 7-1-7? Start on the row marked 7 and stop when you're back there. One-card rounds with six players are chaos and everyone knows it; that's the good part.

Pick your scoring before the deal

Tick one box on the sheet. Exact-only is sharper — a missed bid is a zero, full stop. Everyone-counts is friendlier — tricks always score 1, exact bids add 10. Both are widely played; mixing them mid-game is how arguments start.

Frequently asked

Can you bid zero? Absolutely, and on big hands a made zero is often the best bid on the table.

What if trump turn-up is impossible? In the round where every card is dealt, there's no turn-up — play it no-trump.

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