Help is organized in the following sections.
These are the basic NeuralPlay Twenty-Nine rules. You may customize the rules to your liking as described here.
Twenty-Nine is a 4 player partnership game played with a deck 32 playing cards. The top 8 cards (7 to A) are taken from each suit of a standard deck to make the 32 card deck.
The object the game is to capture points to make the team's bid and prevent the other team from making their bid.
The play is broken down into hands (rounds). Hands are played until the game is over. You form a team with the player across from you and accumulate points from each hand played. The game ends when a team reaches plus or minus 6 points. The team with the highest score wins.
Each hand consists of six stages: the initial deal, bidding, choosing trump, the second deal, playing, and scoring.
At the start of the game the dealer is chosen randomly. From then on, the deal rotates counterclockwise until the game ends. Four cards are dealt to each player.
The bidding begins with the player to the right of the dealer. The bidding rotates counterclockwise. A player may choose to bid or pass. Once a player has passed the player may not bid again.
The initial bidder must either bid 16 or pass. Subsequent bidders may bid higher or pass. The current bidder with the highest bid has the option to match a subsequent bid or pass. This creates a competition between two players until one player passes. Once a player has passed the bid moves on to the next player that has not passed. If all players pass, the dealer must bid 16.
The player who wins the bidding (declarer) chooses the trump suit for this round. The trump suit is hidden and is not shown to the other players during play until a player is out of a suit and must discard. The trump suit is automatically revealed (see options to adjust this).
After the bidding has finished and the trump suit is chosen, 4 more cards to each player. Players now have 8 cards to start play.
The play consists of eight tricks. A trick consist of 4 cards, 1 card from each player. For each trick, there is a leader, a suit led, and a winner. The leader is the player who plays the first card. The suit led is the suit of the card played by the leader The winner of the trick is determined by the best card played of the suit led, however, if a trump was played on the trick, then the winner is the best trump card played.
The card rankings are as follows.
There are two phases of play. In the first phase, there is no trump suit. The highest card of the suit led wins the trick.
The second phase starts when a player does not have the suit led and must discard. At this point, the trump suit is revealed to all players and the second phase begins. During the second phase, the trump suit is effective and a trump card on a trick is higher than other non-trump cards played on the trick.
The trump suit is indicated by a 3 of the trump suit or a joker if the trump suit is notrump.
The player to the right of the dealer makes the first lead. Play continues counterclockwise with each player playing a card in turn. Players must play the suit led if they have it, otherwise, they may play any card from their hand.
After each player has played a card on the trick, the winning player takes the trick and places it aside until the scoring stage. This player is the leader of the next trick. The play stage continues until players have no cards left in their hands.
After the hand has been played out, the points captured by each team are counted.
The point cards are:
| Rank | J | 9 | A | T |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Points | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
The 7, 8, Q, and K of the suits are not worth any points.
The number of points taken by the declarer's team is checked against the bid. The declarer's team needs to take at least as many points as the bid to make the bid. If the team makes the bid, one point is added their score. If they fail, one point is subtracted from their score. The defending team does not receive any points.
The game ends when one team reaches a score of either plus or minus 6 points.
There are many helpful web sites discussing Twenty-Nine. Here are a few we found helpful.
NeuralPlay Twenty Nine offers many features to help you learn and improve your play. These features may be enabled, disabled, and/or adjusted in settings. The features include the following.
Play with the Twenty-Nine rules you like! NeuralPlay's Twenty-Nine offers many rule options for you to customize the game to your liking. A basic beginner version and a more advanced version are preset. You can further customize them with the following options.
NeuralPlay computer players offer 6 levels of play. Play at level 1 is reasonably easy and good for beginners. Play at level 3 should be fun for most players. Play at level 6 will be the most challenging.
The AI bots employ different AI methods depending on the level. Levels 1 and 2 use simple methods to provide an introduction to beginners. We will not describe them in detail here.
Level 3 uses a rule-based AI. The AI consists of rules such as: "In 3rd seat, do not trump partner's high card" and "In 4th seat, play just high enough to take it when an opponent is winning", etc. We find the rules work quite well and can provide good play.
Levels 4+ use Monte Carlo Simulation to determine the best play. Basically, the AI will deal out the unknown cards randomly. The AI will then try each legal play and play the deal to the end to get a result. This is repeated for many deals of the unknown cards. The average result for each legal play is computed and the legal play with the best average result is chosen.
Levels 4+ differ in how many times the unknown cards are dealt out. In general, the more deals the more accurate the simulation. This results in better quality plays. The trade-off is that more deals take more time, play may be slower on level 6 than level 4 depending on the device.
Since levels 4+ do not use rules, you may observe either surprisingly good plays or odd mistakes that may seem not to follow any logical rules. Overall, our tests show that the levels are better than the rule-based level 3. We also find the randomness makes the computer feel a bit more human-like and fun.
If you prefer a more consistent, logical, and predictable partner AI and/or opponent AI, then level 3 may be best.
We are continuing to research improvements and new computer AI algorithms. We continue to update the bots as we develop improved algorithms.
See Settings -> Hand Sorting. You can change the rank order, suit order, and choose to alternate red and black suits.
Go to the Main Screen and choose Menu -> Reset.
These terms are used in bridge games. You are always South and your partner is always North. The terms You and South are used interchangeably.
Claim means you will take the remaining tricks. When your hand is clearly high, you may claim the remaining tricks to speed up play. If the claim is successful (the AI will check), you will receive the remaining tricks and the hand will end.
Please contact us at support@neuralplay.com.