What's New

Tap a badge or a seat mark to read what it means.

Phones have no hover, so the order number, the row of cards, the dealer button and the badges on a seat said nothing there. Now a tap shows what each one means.

Watch a game before you sit down.

When people are playing, the front page offers Watch a game: the table in progress, with every hand hidden. Tap Sit down to take a computer player’s seat when the hand ends, or Stop watching to go back. The people playing see how many are watching.

Play more than one table at once.

Tap + Another table over the felt to sit at, or watch, a second table while you keep your first. Each table is a tab; a red dot marks one that is waiting on you, and the × leaves it (a second tap while you are in a hand).

A player who has stepped away now says AWAY, and their turns no longer hold up the table.

After two turns in a row run out on the clock, the seat shows AWAY and their cards are played at bot speed instead of 30 seconds a turn, the same as a player who has dropped. One move of their own and they are back to normal; five missed turns with other people at the table and a bot takes the seat.

Chat at the table, and the hand log on its own.

Talk to the table while you play: type a message, or tap Quick for Nice hand!, Boston! and more. What happened each hand now has its own log under its own heading, newest first, apart from the talk. Both fold away with a tap.

Mute or report someone in the table chat.

Tap the dots after anybody else’s line: Mute hides what they say from you only, and Report this line sends us exactly what was said, with the lines before it. A person reads every report.

Table news no longer covers your partner’s seat.

The bids and calls at the start of a hand stacked over the top seat for ten seconds. They now sit just above the table, centered on it.

The Sheet: every hand at the table, beside the score.

A column for each player and a row for each hand, newest on top, with the running total underneath. It sits under the score, and folds away with a tap.

A quick double tap plays one card, and a lost connection says so.

Your cards dim for a moment while your play goes through, so a second tap is never sent. If the connection is down, the table tells you instead of doing nothing.

On a phone the players at the sides stay clear of the middle of the table.

Their name boxes were wide enough to reach the cards being played. They are narrower now, and the bots’ habit line is left off on small phones.

The last card plays itself, and you can leave after the hand.

With one card left there is nothing to choose, so it plays after about a second. Leave after this hand keeps your seat until the hand is over and shows you the last trick before you go.

The table slows down enough to see each trick, and you can pick the speed.

A finished trick now stays up long enough to read before it is swept, with a longer pause before the next deal, as Sheepshead Club players asked for. Tap the speed button over the table for Slow or Fast; Fast is the old quick pace.

A player whose connection drops shows as away, and a phone reconnects the moment it wakes.

If your own connection is lost the table says so at the top, and a phone that slept comes straight back into its seat instead of waiting on a retry.

Your turn shows in the browser tab, and on the seat being asked.

The tab reads "Your turn" while the table waits on you, so you can tell from another tab. The seat on turn carries a small pill saying what it is being asked for: BID, TRUMP?, DISCARD or PLAY.

Your hand follows the contract: trump first, colors alternating, downtown reading 2 over ace.

It sorted the same way whatever was bid. A gray card now says why it cannot be played, the jokers counting as trump in a suit contract; and on a phone a full hand fits on one row.

Each card lands in front of its player, a little crooked, and the trick gathers onto the winner’s card.

The winner’s name shows by the winning card, and the card you tapped lifts until it lands. Played cards used to sit in a row in the middle.

Look back at the last trick, or the whole hand.

Beside the table, the last trick shows each player’s card, numbered in the order played, the lead in gold and the winner outlined. Tap This hand for every trick so far, players down and tricks across. The table talk now keeps the whole hand too.

Faces on the seats, and a choice of bots.

Each player has a disc with their initials, in their own color every hand; the bots’ discs are plain. Over the table, tap the bots button for Easy, Hard or Tournament bots.

Each seat shows who plays when, and how many cards they hold.

A small number before each name is the order of play this hand, starting at the dealer’s left, and a row of face-down cards shows how many each player still has. At a friends table with the turn clock off, if someone holds everybody up for 45 seconds, any other player can tap kick and a bot takes the seat.

The contract in the middle of the table no longer hides under your partner.

On a shorter window the contract chip in the middle of the felt slid under the top seat's name box. It now sits just below it.

Your hand stays on screen on a laptop.

The table took the same share of the window whatever sat around it, so on a shorter screen, or with BIG cards, your own cards ran off the bottom edge. The table now takes only the height left once the score and your hand are counted. Phones scroll to the hand as before.

The table buttons no longer cover your cards.

The Games, BIG, 4-color and Sound buttons sat in the corner over the page, so on a phone, and on a laptop with a long hand, they covered your last cards. With room beside the table they now stand in a column there; otherwise they sit under your hand, with the ? beside them.

On a wide screen the score and the table talk sit beside the table.

They sat under your hand, where nobody scrolls in the middle of a hand. Now the table, your hand and your bids stay together on the left, and the buttons, the score and the table talk stand in a column on the right. Phones and narrow windows are unchanged.

A dealer button on the table.

A D disc sits in front of the dealer and slides to the next dealer when the deal moves, in place of the small "dealer" line under the name.

A dropped connection puts you back in your seat.

If your connection blinked, the page came back showing a table that had stopped moving, and the seat held for you went to a bot without you ever getting it back. Now the page takes its own seat back as soon as it reconnects, signed in or not.

Table sounds: a ding when it is your turn, a snap for each card, a chime for the result.

The same quiet sounds Sheepshead Club has always had. The ding matters most: if you are in another tab when it comes round to you, you hear it before the clock runs out. Sound on / off is in the bottom-right corner beside BIG and the deck colors, and signed in, your choice follows you to every game.

Streak badges at the table: HOT, COLD, BOSTON and SET.

Signed-in players now wear badges for how their last few hands went. HOT for five wins in a row, COLD for five losses, BOSTON when your side bid and took all twelve, and SET when your last bid fell short. They come and go with the hands. Hover over one to see what it means.

The table moves: cards fly in, tricks sweep to the winner, and the hand sits in gold up top.

A played card now flies in from the seat that played it, and a finished trick sweeps toward whoever took it while their seat glows gold. Your cards deal into your hand, the score pops when a hand settles, and the winning side celebrates. Whose turn it is glows. Above the table, the high bid and then the contract and its trump are shown in gold. Table news arrives as a short message near the top of the felt. If your device is set to reduce motion, all of it stays still.

The page opens on a welcome, and the cards wait until you take your seat.

The table used to deal you in the moment the page loaded, so somebody still reading the rules could run out of time on their first bid. Now the page opens with your name and one Take my seat button, and the cards come out when you press it. Coming back, it is one Play Now button. The name you choose is kept for next time.

Report a bug or write to us from anywhere on the site.

Report a bug and our address, support@sheepsheadclub.com, are now at the foot of every screen, and the report box shows the address too. After every hand there is a Report this hand button that sends the hand's number with what you write, so we can find it. We read every report.

Report a bug, right from the table.

The Report a bug button at the top of the table sends what went wrong, an optional screenshot, and which hand it was, so it can be found and fixed.

A "?" in the corner of the table: which card beats which, for the hand in play.

Tap the round ? at the bottom left, or press the ? key. During the auction it shows the uptown and downtown order and the two jokers; once the bid is won it shows that hand's order, trump first. It opens over the table, so you keep your seat.

When the site is updated, an open tab now tells you.

A gold bar appears at the top with a Reload button, so a fix reaches you without having to know to refresh.

Supporter badges show at the Bid Whist table.

A Friend, Patron or Charter badge now shows beside a player's name at every seat, the same as at Sheepshead Club, along with how many Bid Whist hands they have played.

Sign in with your Highpass account, the same one you use for Sheepshead.

Sign in at the top of the table and you sit down under your own name instead of a made-up one, with your supporter badge if you have one. New here? Create an account with a name, a password and an email for resetting it. Once signed in, Play Sheepshead or Play Euchre takes you there already signed in.

Big print cards, and your card choices follow your account.

BIG makes every card one large rank with its suit under it, in the same two colors, and the deck button switches between two-color and four-color. Both now sit at the bottom right of the table, where Sheepshead Club keeps them. Signed in, your choice is saved to your account and is waiting for you on every Highpass game.

Games: every Highpass game in one place, and you arrive signed in.

The Games button at the bottom right opens a list of every Highpass game, including the ones coming next. Tap one and you go there; signed in, you arrive as yourself, with your badge and your card choices.

You now see the last card of every trick, and who took it.

The last card played to a trick vanished the moment it landed: the table cleared for the next trick before it was drawn, so nobody saw the fourth card or which card won. The finished trick now stays on the table, with the winning card outlined, for as long as the table pauses before the next lead, then clears, the same way Sheepshead Club does it.

Every Highpass game now keeps its hands for fairness checks, and for twelve months in full.

Bid Whist and Euchre hands are now recorded the way Sheepshead hands always have been: the deal, its published fingerprint, the table rules and every card played, with no names in it. A hand is kept in full for twelve months, then trimmed to a summary that still proves the deal was fair. Your link to a hand you played is still deleted after seven days. The privacy policy says so.

Your stats: signed in, see your hands and points.

Open your account (your name, top right) and press Your stats: hands played, points and hands your side scored, for today, this week and all time. Every hand you play signed in counts.

My hands: play back any hand from the last week, card by card.

Signed in, open your account and tap My hands: every hand you finished in the last seven days, with what it was worth. Tap one to play it back step by step, with all four hands face up, every bid and every card in the order it was played, and who took each trick. Report this hand sends it straight to us if something looks wrong. Only you can open your own hands, and they leave the list after seven days, the same as on Sheepshead Club.

Arriving at a Bid Whist table mid-hand no longer shows you a sentence asking you to wait.

A hand runs about a hundred seconds, so somebody arriving at a random moment waited the best part of a minute in front of a line of text saying a hand was in progress. They now watch the hand being played, with the seats, the cards and the bidding, and take the next seat when it ends.

How to play Bid Whist, with the rules you can try as you read them.

A full walkthrough at bidwhistlive.com: the 54-card deck and both jokers, uptown against downtown, what a bid actually promises, the kitty, and how a trick is won. Uptown and downtown flip the same thirteen cards in front of you, and the trick quiz is judged by the same code that resolves real tricks at the table, so the page cannot teach a rule the game does not play.

The Bid Whist bots have names, and they tell you how they play.

They were Bot 1 through Bot 4, which threw away the fact that each one really does play differently. They are a named cast now, and each seat says its habit under its name: one bids seven books with five, one waits all night for a hand worth bidding, one knows better than it plays. You can learn a seat and play against it.

Bid Whist keeps score, shows the clock, and tells you how your side did.

Three things the table was doing and never showing. There is a running score for both partnerships, so you can see who is ahead without keeping it in your head. The turn clock now appears when twenty seconds remain, instead of the table quietly playing your hand for you with no warning. And the result of a hand is written from your side of it: a bid that was set used to read the same way for all four players, including the two who had just beaten it, and now it says whether you won or lost and by how much.

Bid Whist hands are now dealt from a much bigger secret too.

Every Bid Whist hand is now shuffled from a fresh 256-bit random secret instead of a shorter seed, the same way Sheepshead hands are dealt. The deal's fingerprint is still published before the first card, and the secret is shown when the hand ends.

Bid Whist bidding stops at six.

A bid of six is a Boston, all twelve tricks. Seven was on the buttons and could never be made: it asks for thirteen tricks out of twelve, so anyone who bid it was set before a card was played.

A no-trump Bid Whist hand could stop dead when a joker was led.

The jokers have no power in no trump, so leading one leaves nothing to follow. The table treated it as a suit anyway, and a player still holding the other joker was then left with no legal card at all: the hand could not go on and every seat waited forever. The first real card played now sets the suit, and a joker in no trump loses to anything.

Bid Whist plays against bots: sit down at bidwhistlive.com and a hand is dealt to you.

The table fills its empty seats, so one person and three bots start a full hand straight away instead of waiting for strangers. The bots bid, name trump, take the kitty and play all twelve tricks, and they come in temperaments the way the sheepshead bots do: a rock that wants a trick in hand before it opens, a gambler that gets set, and sound seats in between. Measured over thousands of hands against the placeholder that used to sit in those chairs, they take about three quarters of the tricks.