Strategy ยท Chapter 8

Tarabish by the numbers

What 10,585 real hands on Play Some Bish say about how the game goes. Not computer simulations, games people and computer players actually played here.

The short version

A call goes bait about 1 time in 4. A forced call, about 1 time in 3.

Four hands in ten end with the dealer forced to call. A run is scored in two hands out of three, and one team wins every trick about 1 hand in 87.

All hands played on the site from October 1 to November 5, 2026.

Going bait

How often a call goes bait

Kind of callHandsGoes bait
All calls10,58524%
Normal calls6,31518%
Forced calls4,27033%

A half-bait counts as a bait.

The simulation said 18% for normal calls and 31% for forced ones. The real games land on the same numbers.

People and the computer

Who calledNormal callsForced calls
A person20% (2,207 hands)29% (1,712)
The computer17% (4,108)36% (2,558)

People go bait a little more on a normal call and a little less on a forced one. When forced, people seem to pick their suit with more care than the computer does. Of the three modes, solo, online and the Daily Challenge all land between 24% and 26%.

Who calls

Where the calls come from

Who calledShare of handsGoes bait
The dealer, forced40%33%
The player after the dealer28%19%
The partner of the dealer23%19%
The player before the dealer9%15%

The player who bids last before the dealer calls the least often, but when they call they go bait the least too: 15%. They have heard everyone else pass, and they only call a good hand.

A person in that seat calls more freely than the computer. In the third seat, people called 39% of the time they had the choice, the computer 14%.

Trump suit

No suit is favoured. Diamonds were trump in 26% of hands, hearts 26%, spades 24% and clubs 24%.

Points

Runs, bella and sweeps

In one handHow often
At least one run scored65%
A run worth 20 points48%
A run worth 50 points15%
Runs worth 40 or more in total3%
Bella (King and Queen of trump)20%
One team wins every trick1.2%

The two teams share 162 points in the tricks each hand. The calling team averages 107 of them on a normal call and 95 on a forced one. That shows why the forced call is so much harder: it starts 12 points behind.

When one team did win every trick, it was the calling team 99% of the time.

Where the numbers come from

How we know

Every hand played on the site since October 1, 2026 was logged: the cards dealt, each play, and the points. That is 10,585 hands, 7,827 solo, 2,136 online and 622 Daily Challenge. All solo hands were against the hardest computer players. Nothing here identifies a player.

The sample is large for the big questions and small for the details. We show the number of hands where it matters. The figures will move a little as more games are played.

Updated 2026-11-05.

Add to the numbers.

Play a few hands and see how yours compare.