How to play Trix
Four kingdoms, five contracts each — twenty rounds of trick-taking.
Also known as تريكس
Trix is a four-player trick-taking card game hugely popular across the Levant and Egypt, played with a standard 52-card deck, thirteen cards to each player. Every player takes a turn as king, and a full match is four kingdoms — one per player.
Within your kingdom you call all five contracts, in whatever order you like: King of Hearts, Queens, Diamonds, Collections and Trix. Four of them are avoidance contracts where penalty cards cost you points; the fifth, Trix, is a laddering race where finishing first pays. Twenty contracts in all, and the highest score wins.
Finish the four kingdoms with the highest total — dodging penalty cards in the four avoidance contracts while racing to go out first in Trix.
How to play Trix
- 1Deal
All 52 cards are dealt evenly, 13 to each of the four players. There are no partnerships in standard Trix, though ScoresDeck also supports a 2-vs-2 partners variant.
- 2Take your kingdom
Each player takes a turn as king. A kingdom is that player’s turn, and they call all five contracts during it, choosing the order. Four kingdoms complete the match.
- 3Play the avoidance contracts
In King of Hearts, Queens, Diamonds and Collections you follow suit and try NOT to win the penalty cards. Taking them costs you points.
- 4Play the Trix contract
In Trix, players build sequences outward from the jacks and race to shed every card. Finishing order pays 200, 150, 100 and 50 points.
- 5Rotate the crown
When the king has called all five contracts the crown passes on. ScoresDeck tallies each contract as you tap in the result and keeps every running total.
Scoring
The four avoidance contracts
Each penalty card carries a fixed cost: the King of Hearts is −75, each Queen is −25, each Diamond is −15, and each trick taken in Collections is −10. A full Diamonds contract puts 13 cards worth −195 on the table; a full Collections contract, 13 tricks worth −130.
Suit management is everything — the whole skill is off-loading danger onto opponents before it lands on you.
Doubling the King and Queens
Doubling is optional and switched on at setup. Any player may double the King of Hearts or a Queen, and doing so cuts both ways: whoever ends up eating the doubled card pays twice — −150 for the King, −50 for a Queen — while the player who doubled it collects the card’s face value as a bonus, +75 or +25, for successfully feeding it away.
Self-doubling is a separate setting. Eat a card you doubled yourself and you take the full doubled penalty with nobody collecting a bonus; if another player forced it on you, they take the bonus instead. In partners, a teammate never collects that bonus off their own partner.
Trix, and winning the match
The Trix contract is the only one that pays: 200 points for going out first, then 150, 100 and 50. It cannot be doubled.
Scores accumulate across all twenty contracts and the highest total wins. In partners, teammates’ scores are combined, and you can optionally enable a mercy rule that ends the match early once one team leads by an agreed margin.
Variants ScoresDeck supports
The standard four-player solo game — four kingdoms, five contracts each.
A 2-vs-2 team version where teammates combine scores. Supports the optional mercy rule.
A shorter, denser ruleset that fuses the four avoidance contracts into one round.
Frequently asked questions
Trix is played by exactly four players. ScoresDeck supports both the standard solo game and a 2-vs-2 partners variant.
Four kingdoms — one per player — with five contracts called in each, so twenty contracts in total. There is no target score; the match ends when the fourth kingdom is finished.
King of Hearts −75, each Queen −25, each Diamond −15, each Collections trick −10. Trix pays 200, 150, 100 and 50 for the four finishing positions. Doubling the King or a Queen makes the penalty −150 or −50, and pays the doubler +75 or +25 for feeding it away.
The highest score wins. Four of the five contracts only ever cost points, so strong play means finishing closest to zero on those and taking the Trix bonuses.
Stop keeping score on paper
ScoresDeck handles every point of Trix for you — running totals, the live leader, and the winner the moment the match ends.
Get ScoresDeck