Ninety-nine is a card game for 2, 3, or 4 players. It is a trick-taking game that can use ordinary French-suited cards. Ninety-nine was created in 1967 by David Parlett; his goal was to have a good 3-player trick-taking game with simple rules yet great room for strategy. In ninety-nine, players bid for the number of tricks that they will take; players who gain exactly that number of tricks (no more or less) gain a significant bonus. One unusual feature of ninety-nine is that players bid by discarding three cards. Rules Dealing A round of ninety-nine begins with the deal of a shuffled deck. The two- and three-player versions of the game use only the 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, J, Q, K, A (ranked from lowest to highest) - note that 6 is the lowest rank, and that the 2 through 5 are not included in the deck. The four-player version of the game uses the entire 52-card deck (in which case the 2 is the lowest rank). Players are dealt the entire deck, one card at a time, with all cards face down. In the two-player version, the cards are dealt to the two players and also to a third pseudo-player called the "dummy". As a result, in the two- and three-player versions players are initially dealt 12 cards, while in the four-player version players are initially dealt 13 cards. Players should sort their cards by suit, and by rank inside a suit. Trump suit is then determined. In the very first round of a game, there are no trumps. After that, the trump suit is determined by the number of players who won the last round: Diamonds if 0, Spades if 1, Hearts if 2, and Clubs if 3. In the four-player version, if all four players win a round, the next round is played with no trumps. Bidding Each player then bids on the number of tricks they expect to take. Players bid by discarding any three cards in their hand; each suit is worth a certain number of tricks, and the total number bid by three cards determines the bid using the following code: Thus, if a player discards a club and two diamonds, they have bid 3+0+0=3 tricks. Normally, these discarded "bid" cards are placed face-down on the table, so that the other players will not know how many tricks that player is trying