Rook

Play the classic Rook trick-taking card game on your iPhone or iPad.

You play South, partnered with North, against the West/East team. Rook uses a special deck with four colored suits numbered 5 through 14, plus the powerful Rook card. In this app, the Rook is represented by a castle chess piece, and the cards are designed to be color-blind friendly.

Customize the game to match the Rook rules you know. Change the wallpaper, add optional 1 cards ranked above the 14s, choose whether players must play trump when unable to follow suit, award a bonus for winning every trick, adjust the winning score, and more.

HOW TO PLAY

Dealing: The deal rotates to the left each hand. Each player receives 9 cards, with 5 additional cards dealt to the widow in the center of the table.

Bidding: Players bid for the right to choose the trump suit. The player to the dealer’s left opens the bidding at 70 or passes. Bidding continues to the left, usually in 5-point increments. Once a player passes, that player is out of the bidding for the hand.

The Widow and Trump: The high bidder takes the 5 widow cards, which are revealed to all players, chooses the trump suit, and then discards 5 cards. The discarded cards remain hidden from the other players. Depending on your settings, point cards in the discard go either to the bidding team or to the winner of the last trick.

Playing Tricks: The dealer—or optionally the high bidder—leads the first trick. Play continues to the left, with each player playing one card. Players must follow the suit that was led when possible. If unable to follow suit, a player may play any card—or, with the appropriate option enabled, must play trump when possible.

The highest card of the suit led wins unless a trump card is played, in which case the highest trump wins. The Rook is the highest trump card and can be played strategically to capture a valuable trick.

Standard card ranking from highest to lowest is: Rook – 14 – 13 – 12 – 11 – 10 – 9 – 8 – 7 – 6 – 5

With the optional 1 cards enabled: Rook – 1 – 14 – 13 – 12 – 11 – 10 – 9 – 8 – 7 – 6 – 5

The winner of each trick collects the four cards and leads the next trick.

Scoring: At the end of the hand, each team counts the point cards it captured:
• Rook: 20 points
• 14: 10 points
• 10: 10 points
• 5: 5 points
Other cards have no point value.

If the bidding team fails to score enough points to make its bid, the bid amount is deducted from its score. An optional bonus can also be awarded for winning every trick.

Winning: The first team to reach the selected winning score wins the game. You can adjust the target score in the game settings.

Rook is free to play and supported by advertising. Prefer to play without ads? Rook+, the paid ad-free version, is also available on the App Store.