Boat is a four player, partner-based, bidding card game similar to Rook or Bridge.

This game is played in partnership with the player on the opposite side of the screen. The deck consists of the normal suits, but without the twos, threes, and fours. Each suit starts at five and goes up to Ace. In addition, there is a Boat Card. The Boat card is the high trump. There are 41 total cards (10 of each suit plus the Boat Card).

Nine cards are dealt to each player and five cards are placed in the middle of the screen as Bonus Cards. The players then bid to decide who will have a chance to choose the trump suit. Each bid is a number; the minimum bid is 65, and higher bids must be multiples of 5. The player to the left of the dealer has the first chance to bid and the turn passes clockwise around the table. At your turn, you can either bid or pass. Each bid must be higher than the last, and a player who has passed cannot bid again in that hand. The bidding continues as many times around the table as necessary until three players have passed. The fourth player is the high bidder, and the high bidder's team tries to take at least the number of points bid.

The high bidder must then integrate the Bonus Cards to make a hand of 14 cards, and then discard five cards to return to a hand of 9 cards. The Boat card counts as the high card of the trump suit. Any points discarded will be awarded to the team that catches the last trick of the hand. After discarding, the high bidder chooses the trump suit by naming the suit.

The high bidder then leads any card to start the first trick. The other players in turn must play a card of the same suit if they can. If they have no card of the led suit, they must play a trump if they can. If they do not have a card of the led suit or a trump, they may play any card. When everyone has played a card, the trick is won by the player of the highest trump, or, if no trump was played, by the highest card of the suit that was led. The winner of the trick leads the next trick.

At the end of the hand, each team is scored for the total value of the cards they have won in tricks. If the tricks won by the high bidder's team contain at least as many points as the bid, that team score increases by the amount of card points they took. If the high bidder's team takes fewer card points than the bid, they score nothing for the cards they won; instead they subtract the amount of the bid from their previous score. The non-bidding team always receives the total number of points taken by their team, whether the bid was successful or not.

The scoring cards are as follows:

The Boat Card = 20 points
Each Ace = 10 points
Each 10 = 10 points
Each 5 = 5 points

The total points available per hand are 120 points.

The game ends when a team reaches 500 points or more. If both teams exceed 500 points, then the team which has the higher score is the winner.

System Requirements:

Pentium 266 PC or higher
At least 5 MB of free hard drive space
64 MB of RAM or better
Windows 95 or higher

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