Manille (; derived from the Spanish and Catalan Manilla) is a Catalan French trick-taking card game which uses a 32 card deck. It spread to the rest of France in the early 20th century, but was subsequently checked and reversed by the expansion of Belote. It is still popular in France (primarily the north and south-west) and the western part of Belgium.
The game is played with a 32-card piquet deck. It is usually played by four players in two partnerships, but variants with two or three players also exist.
The game
Manille muette
The 32 cards are distributed equally between the four players, starting with the player to the left of the dealer, moving clockwise. There are various ways to do this, often players receive two cards at a time rather than just one, until all players have eight cards each. The dealer then announces the trump suit. There are five possibilities, same as bridge: clubs, diamonds, hearts, spades and no-trump. No trump (known as en voiture in French) also means that the points are doubled at the end of the deal. The dealer can also announce "opposite" (en face) and let his partner choose the trump suit. If the opposing team believes they can beat the chosen trump (get more than 30 points) then they can 'tap' the table to double the points at the end of the deal.
The play
The player to the left of the dealer can play any card of his choice, and the three players after him are obligated to follow suit if they can. If they can't, they can win the hand by playing a trump card or if they can't follow suit or trump, they must discard a card and obligatorily lose the hand. The player who wins the trick starts off the next trick, and so on, until all eight tricks have been completed. Note that the cards follow the normal order of hierarchy used in bridge, except that the 10 is the highest possible card - the order is 10, ace, king, queen, jack, 9, 8, 7. Players are not allowed to talk about their cards during the playing phase of the game.
Scoring
Unlike Bridge, it's not the numbers of tricks taken that decides the score. The cards are all assigned a special value:
10 (manille) - 5 points
Ace (manillon) - 4 points
King - 3 points
Queen - 2 points
Jack - 1 point
9, 8 and 7 - 0 points.
At the end of the deal, the two pairs count up the value of their cards and declare them. The total value of the pack is 60 points ([5 + 4 + 3 + 2 + 1] x 4), so to get the opponents' score the players simply subtract their total from 60. If there have been any doubles or redoubled, these are applied after counting the total. Points are scored relative to 30 as this is half of 60. For example, a team that wins the deal 36 - 24 gets six points (36 - 30) and the opposition gets zero. If there has been a violation of the rules, for example one player trumping another player's trick when he could have followed suit, the other pair gets the maximum points for that deal (30 points).
The game typically ends in one of three ways
Players play until one pair has 101 points, the first to this total wins
Players play 50 deals and whichever pair has the most points wins. Players play 12 deals and whichever pair has the most points wins.
Alternate Rules
In some regions it is possible to call out a 'Blind trump' which means that the dealer chooses a trump -usually no trump- before seeing his cards. The dealer gets to lead the first trick and points are automatically doubled at the end of the deal. This means the points are quadrupled for 'no trump' at the end of the deal. Some games allow 'double tapping' the table. If the opposing team 'tapped' the table and the trumping team believes the opposing team will not win the deal, they may 'double tap' the table, automatically quadrupling the points of the deal. Some games allow 'infinite tapping' the table. This means that there is no limit on how many times the trumping and opposing team can tap.