Manni Variations: Basic Manni, Game Length and House Rules

Manni is played all over Iceland, and like most family card games it has picked up local habits along the way. The common thread is three players, twelve tricks, a spare pile called the Manni and a par of four tricks. What changes is how trump is chosen, how you trade with the Manni, and how the score is kept. Our online Manni game plays the Hornafjörður version described in the rules; this page covers the others.

Game Length: 10 or 15 Plus Points

The standard game ends after the hand in which someone reaches 10 plus points. That makes for a game of roughly six to ten hands. Some tables like a longer evening and play to a higher number; 15 is a natural choice.

A longer game changes the feel more than you might think. Because minus points never go away, an early bad Nullo hand matters less when there are more hands to recover in. On the other hand, a careless player has more time to pile up minus points.

Basic Manni

The simpler, older form of the game is often just called Manni. It is a gentle introduction and still popular with children and grandparents:

• A 48-card pack. The four 2s are taken out and used only as markers to show which suit is trump.
• Trump rotates in a fixed order from hand to hand (for example hearts, spades, diamonds, clubs), so there is no cut and no Nullo or no-trump hand.
• Deal in fours. Each player gets 12 cards and the Manni gets 12.
• Swap the whole hand. The player on the dealer's left may exchange their entire hand for the Manni, sight unseen. If they decline, the next player may, and so on. Only one player can take the Manni.
• Simple scoring. Each trick over four scores a point, and the first to reach 10 points wins.

Basic Manni is a fine warm-up, but the all-or-nothing swap and rotating trump leave less room for skill than Hornafjarðarmanni's partial swaps and cut-card contracts. Our online game doesn't offer it, but you can play it at home with an ordinary deck.

Scoring Habits

Hornafjarðarmanni keeps plus points and minus points in two separate columns, and our game does the same. It is worth understanding why. If you kept one running total per player instead, adding and subtracting as you go, the final net score would be the same, but the game would end at a different time: a player would need 10 points net to finish, which usually takes longer. With two columns, the game ends as soon as anyone's plus column reaches 10, and that player may well lose on net score. That is part of the fun: reaching 10 first sends everyone to check the minus columns.

Making It Your Own

Kitchen-table games are meant to be adjusted. If you play with a real deck at home, these are easy changes to agree on before you start. They are not part of the standard rules, and our online game doesn't use them.

• Equal swap limits. Letting the first two players swap the same number of cards makes the seat you sit in matter less.
• Discards face up. Turning the discards over after the swap makes counting cards easier for newer players.
• A shorter game. For a quick game before dinner, play to 5 plus points.

Which Rules Does Our Game Use?

By default: three players, the full 52-card pack, the cut card setting Nullo (2 to 5), trump (6 to 9) or no trump (10 to ace), swaps of up to 7, up to 5 and the rest, par 4, separate plus and minus columns, and the game ending when someone reaches 10 plus points, with the best net score winning. The game length can be changed in Settings, under House rules.

For tips on playing each contract well, read our Manni strategy guide. If you like trick games with a twist, Oh Hell! is a good next stop.