500 Card Game Scoring Explained: Bids, Tricks and the 500-Point Target

The 500 scoreboard looks like a wall until you see what it is pricing. Each bid is a promise: how many of the ten tricks your partnership will take, and whether that hand runs with a trump suit or without one. Higher trick levels cost more. Stronger trump ranks (and No-Trump) cost more at the same level. Make the contract and you bank that price. Miss it and the same number comes off your total.

That risk ladder is the whole job of this article: contract values, failed bids, defender trick points, Misere on the board, and the race to 500 (or the drop to -500). It is not a second rankings lesson, auction coach, or Misere how-to. For the full deal flow of kitty, lead, and play, use the How to Play 500 guide.

A contract is a priced promise

In Australian-style partnership 500, the winning bidder names the trick target and the trump (or No-Trump). "7 Hearts" means at least seven tricks with Hearts as trump. "8 No-Trump" means at least eight tricks with no trump suit in play. If the contracting side reaches that mark, it scores the published value of that bid. If it falls short, it loses that same value.

So the auction is not only about naming a suit you like. It is about choosing how large a swing you are willing to put on the scoreboard. Judging whether a level is actually makeable belongs in How to Bid in 500; here the focus stays on what the numbers do once the bid is fixed.

The common scoring table

Solitaire Arcade's Australian-style table follows the familiar Avondale-style ladder.

6 tricks: Spades 40, Clubs 60, Diamonds 80, Hearts 100, No-Trump 120.

7 tricks: Spades 140, Clubs 160, Diamonds 180, Hearts 200, No-Trump 220.

8 tricks: Spades 240, Clubs 260, Diamonds 280, Hearts 300, No-Trump 320.

9 tricks: Spades 340, Clubs 360, Diamonds 380, Hearts 400, No-Trump 420.

10 tricks: Spades 440, Clubs 460, Diamonds 480, Hearts 500, No-Trump 520.

Two axes drive every cell. At a fixed trick level, suits rise Spades, Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts, then No-Trump. Across levels, each step up the trick ladder is worth more than anything from the level below: every seven-level bid outranks every six-level bid, and so on. A higher call is not only louder confidence. It is a larger credit if you land it and a larger debit if you do not.

When the contract is made

Win at least the tricks you bid and you score the full contract value. Bid 6 Hearts and take six: 100 points. Bid 8 Diamonds and take eight: 280. Bid 9 No-Trump and take all ten: still 420, because the contract on the sheet is still 9 No-Trump.

That last point surprises players coming from other partnership games, where extra tricks often look like a second payday. In 500 they usually do not raise the contractor's score, so if you want the bigger number you generally have to bid the bigger contract. That is the opposite habit from bags in Spades, where overtricks add small points and can later trip a bag penalty; here overtricks are mostly insurance for the contract you already named rather than a second paycheque.

When the contract fails

Fall short of the trick target and the contracting side is set: the bid value comes off the score. Miss 7 Clubs by a trick and you lose 160. Miss 8 Hearts and you lose 300. Miss 10 No-Trump and you lose 520. The same ladder that can finish a game in one hand can also erase several quiet deals, which is why bold contracts only look clever when the tricks are actually there.

Defender trick points

In many Australian-style games, the defending partnership scores 10 points for each trick it wins. If the contractors bid 8 Diamonds and take exactly eight, the defenders took two tricks: contractors score 280, defenders score 20. If the defenders set the contract, the contractors still lose the bid value, and defender trick scoring continues to follow whatever the active ruleset says.

This is one of the places 500 tables disagree. Some rooms award defender points freely. Some cap how far defense can push a total. Some Australian-style finishes use a must-bid-to-win rule, so defender trick points alone cannot walk a side over 500. Online, that rule should be visible before the first lead; kitchen tables usually argue about it once, then stick to the house answer. Version differences around who is allowed to finish without a made contract are covered in Australian 500 vs American 500. This page only needs the scoring shape: contractors live on the bid table; defenders often live on ten-a-trick.

The 500 target and the -500 floor

The usual win line is 500 points, typically through a successful contract under must-bid-to-win house rules. The usual loss line is falling to -500. Sitting near either edge changes what a "sensible" bid looks like. Close to 500, a modest makeable contract can finish the match without a hero call. Far behind, Misere, Open Misere, or a high suit contract can look tempting because one hand moves the board a long way. The same maths cuts downward: a failed swing bid can shove you toward the floor as fast as a made one climbs the ladder.

Why No-Trump pays more at the same level

No-Trump sits above Hearts on every trick row because it removes the cut. In a trump contract you can still win a trick by playing trump when you cannot follow. In No-Trump, the highest card of the suit led usually decides the trick, so you need broader control across the hand, and the table prices that claim by putting 7 No-Trump above 7 Hearts. Whether the cards support that claim belongs in the bidding guide already linked above, while what the bowers and Joker are doing inside a suit contract is covered in 500 Card Rankings Explained.

Misere numbers sit beside the suit ladder

Misere and Open Misere are special contracts: the bidder tries to take no tricks at all. On many Australian-style boards Misere is worth 250 and Open Misere is worth 500. Succeed and your side banks that figure; take even one trick and you lose it. They do not live inside the Spades-to-No-Trump grid because they are not aiming at six-through-ten winners; they exist so a low, slippery hand can still own the auction, and so a late score can jump or collapse in a single deal.

Exact thresholds and auction entry rules vary, and Open Misere is harder under the common face-up hand treatment, so for when those bids make sense and which cards are dangerous, read What Is Misere in 500?. For this page the only scoring point that matters is the size of the swing and the fact that these values sit outside the ordinary suit table.

Other multiplayer games price "avoiding tricks" differently. Hearts mostly punishes the hearts and the Queen of Spades you take over a whole deal, rather than settling one binary zero-trick contract on a published 250/500 line. The shared skill is reading whether your hand wants winners or wants out of the way, even though the scoreboard machinery is not the same.

A plain worked hand

North/South buy 8 Hearts, worth 300. There are ten tricks in the deal, so the contracting side needs eight or more to make and seven or fewer to fail.

If they land the eight, they score 300. If they fall short, they lose 300. That is the whole contractor swing on this hand: the published value either banks or comes off, with no bonus for taking nine or ten instead of eight.

Defense still has a smaller line of its own. If East/West win two tricks, many Australian-style tables give them 20 defender points on top of whatever happened to the contract. Made bid pays the table value, failed bid charges it, and defenders may collect ten per trick under the active rules.

Late scoreboard pressure

Suppose your side sits on 420 and someone reaches for 8 Diamonds (280). Make it and you clear 500. Take only seven tricks and you fall to 140. That is not a small misclick; it is several hands of careful bidding undone in one set. Near the top of the board, the flashy call is often worse than the call your cards can actually land.

Now flip the seats. You have 490 and the opponents win the auction. You defend well and take two tricks. Under some rulesets those 20 points might matter a lot; under must-bid-to-win, they may not be enough to end the game by themselves, so you still need a later contract of your own. Two tables can both call the game "500" and disagree on that exact moment, which is why the active scoring rule should be named before anyone leads.

Reading the table without memorising every cell

You do not need to recite fifty numbers. Learn the pattern. Six-level bids start at 40 for Spades and climb by 20 through Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts, and No-Trump (40, 60, 80, 100, 120). Each higher trick level adds 100 to the same suit: 6 Hearts is 100, 7 Hearts is 200, 8 Hearts is 300, 9 Hearts is 400, 10 Hearts is 500. Find the suit column, find the trick row, and the cell follows. After a few scored hands the grid stops feeling like a poster and starts feeling like a price list.

How the total changes risk appetite

Scoring is not only bookkeeping after the last trick. It shapes which seats should stretch. A 6 Spades contract is a small chip. A 10 No-Trump contract is a session-shaping gamble. Misere and Open Misere can rewrite both totals in one deal. Ahead, steady made contracts often beat hopeful leaps. Behind, you may need the bigger number even when it stings to miss. When opponents are sniffing 500, good defense can matter more than chasing your own headline bid. When you are near -500, even a medium failed contract can end the night.

Partnership contract games all force that score-aware judgement; How to Play Thirteen trains a related habit of watching what is still out, even though its shedding rules have no bid table. In 500 the habit lands on a simpler question each auction: given this total, is the priced risk on the sheet worth it?

Mistakes that scramble the board

The loudest beginner trap is treating overtricks like a second payday. Bid 7 Hearts, take nine, and you still score 7 Hearts. If you wanted the bigger number, you needed the bigger bid on the sheet.

High contracts create the same confusion from the other direction. Players hear "harder" and forget "more expensive when set," so an eight-level miss erases several quiet deals in one hand. Defender scoring gets skipped the same way: ten-a-trick can matter, but under must-bid-to-win house rules those points may not walk anyone over 500 by themselves.

Misere and Open Misere cause a different scramble when players try to shoehorn them into the Spades-to-No-Trump grid. They are separate swing contracts. And while everyone stares at the climb to 500, the -500 floor can end the match just as cleanly if a bold bid fails near the bottom.

Pressure, priced on purpose

Once the ladder is clear, the auction stops looking like random numbers and starts looking like pressure with a price tag. Every bid publishes a reward and a matching cost. Defender tricks and Misere sit beside that core system and explain the dramatic mid-game swings. Learn the pattern, check the active ruleset for defender finishes and Misere values, and the scoreboard becomes readable instead of ornamental. A few made and failed contracts at a live table will teach the ladder faster than staring at the poster ever did.

When you want that pressure under your fingers, play 500 online and watch made contracts, sets, and defender tricks move the board.

500 Card Game Scoring Explained: Bids, Tricks and the 500-Point Target

The 500 scoreboard looks like a wall until you see what it is pricing. Each bid is a promise: how many of the ten tricks your partnership will take, and whether that hand runs with a trump suit or without one. Higher trick levels cost more. Stronger trump ranks (and No-Trump) cost more at the same level. Make the contract and you bank that price. Miss it and the same number comes off your total.

That risk ladder is the whole job of this article: contract values, failed bids, defender trick points, Misere on the board, and the race to 500 (or the drop to -500). It is not a second rankings lesson, auction coach, or Misere how-to. For the full deal flow of kitty, lead, and play, use the How to Play 500 guide.

A contract is a priced promise

In Australian-style partnership 500, the winning bidder names the trick target and the trump (or No-Trump). "7 Hearts" means at least seven tricks with Hearts as trump. "8 No-Trump" means at least eight tricks with no trump suit in play. If the contracting side reaches that mark, it scores the published value of that bid. If it falls short, it loses that same value.

So the auction is not only about naming a suit you like. It is about choosing how large a swing you are willing to put on the scoreboard. Judging whether a level is actually makeable belongs in How to Bid in 500; here the focus stays on what the numbers do once the bid is fixed.

The common scoring table

Solitaire Arcade's Australian-style table follows the familiar Avondale-style ladder.

6 tricks: Spades 40, Clubs 60, Diamonds 80, Hearts 100, No-Trump 120.

7 tricks: Spades 140, Clubs 160, Diamonds 180, Hearts 200, No-Trump 220.

8 tricks: Spades 240, Clubs 260, Diamonds 280, Hearts 300, No-Trump 320.

9 tricks: Spades 340, Clubs 360, Diamonds 380, Hearts 400, No-Trump 420.

10 tricks: Spades 440, Clubs 460, Diamonds 480, Hearts 500, No-Trump 520.

Two axes drive every cell. At a fixed trick level, suits rise Spades, Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts, then No-Trump. Across levels, each step up the trick ladder is worth more than anything from the level below: every seven-level bid outranks every six-level bid, and so on. A higher call is not only louder confidence. It is a larger credit if you land it and a larger debit if you do not.

When the contract is made

Win at least the tricks you bid and you score the full contract value. Bid 6 Hearts and take six: 100 points. Bid 8 Diamonds and take eight: 280. Bid 9 No-Trump and take all ten: still 420, because the contract on the sheet is still 9 No-Trump.

That last point surprises players coming from other partnership games, where extra tricks often look like a second payday. In 500 they usually do not raise the contractor's score, so if you want the bigger number you generally have to bid the bigger contract. That is the opposite habit from bags in Spades, where overtricks add small points and can later trip a bag penalty; here overtricks are mostly insurance for the contract you already named rather than a second paycheque.

When the contract fails

Fall short of the trick target and the contracting side is set: the bid value comes off the score. Miss 7 Clubs by a trick and you lose 160. Miss 8 Hearts and you lose 300. Miss 10 No-Trump and you lose 520. The same ladder that can finish a game in one hand can also erase several quiet deals, which is why bold contracts only look clever when the tricks are actually there.

Defender trick points

In many Australian-style games, the defending partnership scores 10 points for each trick it wins. If the contractors bid 8 Diamonds and take exactly eight, the defenders took two tricks: contractors score 280, defenders score 20. If the defenders set the contract, the contractors still lose the bid value, and defender trick scoring continues to follow whatever the active ruleset says.

This is one of the places 500 tables disagree. Some rooms award defender points freely. Some cap how far defense can push a total. Some Australian-style finishes use a must-bid-to-win rule, so defender trick points alone cannot walk a side over 500. Online, that rule should be visible before the first lead; kitchen tables usually argue about it once, then stick to the house answer. Version differences around who is allowed to finish without a made contract are covered in Australian 500 vs American 500. This page only needs the scoring shape: contractors live on the bid table; defenders often live on ten-a-trick.

The 500 target and the -500 floor

The usual win line is 500 points, typically through a successful contract under must-bid-to-win house rules. The usual loss line is falling to -500. Sitting near either edge changes what a "sensible" bid looks like. Close to 500, a modest makeable contract can finish the match without a hero call. Far behind, Misere, Open Misere, or a high suit contract can look tempting because one hand moves the board a long way. The same maths cuts downward: a failed swing bid can shove you toward the floor as fast as a made one climbs the ladder.

Why No-Trump pays more at the same level

No-Trump sits above Hearts on every trick row because it removes the cut. In a trump contract you can still win a trick by playing trump when you cannot follow. In No-Trump, the highest card of the suit led usually decides the trick, so you need broader control across the hand, and the table prices that claim by putting 7 No-Trump above 7 Hearts. Whether the cards support that claim belongs in the bidding guide already linked above, while what the bowers and Joker are doing inside a suit contract is covered in 500 Card Rankings Explained.

Misere numbers sit beside the suit ladder

Misere and Open Misere are special contracts: the bidder tries to take no tricks at all. On many Australian-style boards Misere is worth 250 and Open Misere is worth 500. Succeed and your side banks that figure; take even one trick and you lose it. They do not live inside the Spades-to-No-Trump grid because they are not aiming at six-through-ten winners; they exist so a low, slippery hand can still own the auction, and so a late score can jump or collapse in a single deal.

Exact thresholds and auction entry rules vary, and Open Misere is harder under the common face-up hand treatment, so for when those bids make sense and which cards are dangerous, read What Is Misere in 500?. For this page the only scoring point that matters is the size of the swing and the fact that these values sit outside the ordinary suit table.

Other multiplayer games price "avoiding tricks" differently. Hearts mostly punishes the hearts and the Queen of Spades you take over a whole deal, rather than settling one binary zero-trick contract on a published 250/500 line. The shared skill is reading whether your hand wants winners or wants out of the way, even though the scoreboard machinery is not the same.

A plain worked hand

North/South buy 8 Hearts, worth 300. There are ten tricks in the deal, so the contracting side needs eight or more to make and seven or fewer to fail.

If they land the eight, they score 300. If they fall short, they lose 300. That is the whole contractor swing on this hand: the published value either banks or comes off, with no bonus for taking nine or ten instead of eight.

Defense still has a smaller line of its own. If East/West win two tricks, many Australian-style tables give them 20 defender points on top of whatever happened to the contract. Made bid pays the table value, failed bid charges it, and defenders may collect ten per trick under the active rules.

Late scoreboard pressure

Suppose your side sits on 420 and someone reaches for 8 Diamonds (280). Make it and you clear 500. Take only seven tricks and you fall to 140. That is not a small misclick; it is several hands of careful bidding undone in one set. Near the top of the board, the flashy call is often worse than the call your cards can actually land.

Now flip the seats. You have 490 and the opponents win the auction. You defend well and take two tricks. Under some rulesets those 20 points might matter a lot; under must-bid-to-win, they may not be enough to end the game by themselves, so you still need a later contract of your own. Two tables can both call the game "500" and disagree on that exact moment, which is why the active scoring rule should be named before anyone leads.

Reading the table without memorising every cell

You do not need to recite fifty numbers. Learn the pattern. Six-level bids start at 40 for Spades and climb by 20 through Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts, and No-Trump (40, 60, 80, 100, 120). Each higher trick level adds 100 to the same suit: 6 Hearts is 100, 7 Hearts is 200, 8 Hearts is 300, 9 Hearts is 400, 10 Hearts is 500. Find the suit column, find the trick row, and the cell follows. After a few scored hands the grid stops feeling like a poster and starts feeling like a price list.

How the total changes risk appetite

Scoring is not only bookkeeping after the last trick. It shapes which seats should stretch. A 6 Spades contract is a small chip. A 10 No-Trump contract is a session-shaping gamble. Misere and Open Misere can rewrite both totals in one deal. Ahead, steady made contracts often beat hopeful leaps. Behind, you may need the bigger number even when it stings to miss. When opponents are sniffing 500, good defense can matter more than chasing your own headline bid. When you are near -500, even a medium failed contract can end the night.

Partnership contract games all force that score-aware judgement; How to Play Thirteen trains a related habit of watching what is still out, even though its shedding rules have no bid table. In 500 the habit lands on a simpler question each auction: given this total, is the priced risk on the sheet worth it?

Mistakes that scramble the board

The loudest beginner trap is treating overtricks like a second payday. Bid 7 Hearts, take nine, and you still score 7 Hearts. If you wanted the bigger number, you needed the bigger bid on the sheet.

High contracts create the same confusion from the other direction. Players hear "harder" and forget "more expensive when set," so an eight-level miss erases several quiet deals in one hand. Defender scoring gets skipped the same way: ten-a-trick can matter, but under must-bid-to-win house rules those points may not walk anyone over 500 by themselves.

Misere and Open Misere cause a different scramble when players try to shoehorn them into the Spades-to-No-Trump grid. They are separate swing contracts. And while everyone stares at the climb to 500, the -500 floor can end the match just as cleanly if a bold bid fails near the bottom.

Pressure, priced on purpose

Once the ladder is clear, the auction stops looking like random numbers and starts looking like pressure with a price tag. Every bid publishes a reward and a matching cost. Defender tricks and Misere sit beside that core system and explain the dramatic mid-game swings. Learn the pattern, check the active ruleset for defender finishes and Misere values, and the scoreboard becomes readable instead of ornamental. A few made and failed contracts at a live table will teach the ladder faster than staring at the poster ever did.

When you want that pressure under your fingers, play 500 online and watch made contracts, sets, and defender tricks move the board.