How Belote is played

1Dealing and bidding

If everybody passes, a second round lets each player name another suit, or pass. The dealer speaks last and, if all the others have passed, must choose.

2Playing a trick

You must follow the suit led. If you cannot, you must trump, and overtrump if you can, even when your partner holds the trick. When trump is led, you must play a higher trump if you have one.

3Melds

4Scoring a deal

These are the rules of the site's tables; the lobby names the ruleset of every table.

5Tournaments

A tournament is played in one of four formats, named under its title. Each tournament sets its own numbers, such as the points for a win or the time for a round: press the format on its page to see them.

Round-robin

Everyone plays everyone else once.

• The whole schedule is drawn before round 1 and does not change.
• With an odd number of players or teams, each sits out one round and scores it as a win.
• A match nobody wins counts as a draw.
• A round-robin of one table of four can change partners instead: three rounds, and your partner changes every round, so you play once with each of the others and twice against them.

Who wins. Most points wins. If two are level, the match between them decides, then the points they scored minus the points scored against them.

Swiss

A set number of rounds. Each round you meet someone on the same points as you, or as close as possible.

• You never meet the same opponent twice.
• With an odd number of players or teams, the lowest-placed one that has not sat out yet sits out the round and scores it as a win. Nobody sits out twice.
• A match nobody wins counts as a draw.

Who wins. Most points wins. If two are level, the one whose opponents scored more goes first, then the higher rating.

Elimination

A knockout: win and you go on, lose and you are out.

• A meeting is a single match, or the best of three: the first to win two goes through.
• When the players or teams do not fill the bracket (4, 8, 16…), those placed highest go through round 1 without playing.
• A meeting that ends level is played again in the same round. A final that ends level goes to whoever was placed higher in the bracket.

Who wins. Whoever wins the final.

Ladder

For a set number of days, every rated match you play scores points.

• There are no rounds: play rated matches of the tournament’s game from the lobby, as many as you like.
• A win, a draw and a loss score the points the tournament sets. Leaving a match counts as a loss; a match nobody wins counts as a draw.
• If you withdraw, you keep what you scored; matches after that do not count.

Who wins. The highest total wins. If two are level, the higher rating goes first.

In every format with rounds

• At a table of four you play in a team of two. The teams are made when round 1 is paired and stay together to the end.
• When your table opens, take your seat within 3 minutes, or you are out of the tournament.
• Each round has a time limit. A match not decided by then is lost by both players or teams, unless one never turned up: then only that one loses it.
• You can withdraw at any time: you keep what you have scored and are not paired again.

6Fair deal

Nobody chooses the cards you are dealt, Belot Club included. Three inputs make every deck, each fixed before the next is known, and after the match anyone can check every deal.

How a deck is made

1. Before anyone sends a seed, the server draws a secret seed for the match and shows the table its commitment, the seed's SHA-256 hash. The commitment proves the seed later without revealing it now.
2. Your browser draws 16 random bytes on your device and sends them as your seed, and so does every player's. Once they are in, the table is shown each seat's seed. A seat a bot plays sends none.
3. The server then names a round of drand, a public randomness beacon run by independent organisations that publishes a new random value every 3 seconds: the first round after the seeds are in, whose value nobody knows yet.
4. Every deal's deck is shuffled from the three together. The server could not choose it, since the players' seeds and drand's value came after its seed; and no player could, since nobody sees the server's seed before the match ends.

Checking a match

Your browser keeps what the table shows it and checks the match itself. When the match ends, the server shows its seed in the table's chat: your browser checks it against the commitment and the cards of each of your deals against its deck, and for a match dealt with drand it asks drand itself for the round's value and compares it with the one the server dealt from. A check that fails is said at the table at once. The replay shows every input, recomputes every deck and compares them with what the tab you played in kept, your cards included. The round links to drand's own page, where you can compare its value.

If drand does not answer

If drand's value has not arrived 5 seconds after it is due, the match is dealt from the server's seed and the players' seeds alone. The table is told at once, and the replay says so.

The exact recipe

For anyone who checks with their own program. Deal k (the first deal is 0, and a redeal counts) reads a stream of blocks; block b is HMAC-SHA256 keyed with the server seed over this message:

The 32 cards start in order: clubs, diamonds, hearts, spades, each from 7 to ace. For each position i from 31 down to 1, take the stream's next byte x; while x ≥ 256 − (256 mod (i + 1)), take another, so that every position is as likely; then swap position i with position x mod (i + 1). With the 24-card deck the sevens and eights are then set aside, the others keeping their order.