Learn to play Auction 45s
Auction 45s (also called Forty-fives, Auction Forty-fives or just 45s) is a fast trick-taking card game for four players in two partnerships. It's played in kitchens, legion halls and church basements across Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, PEI, Newfoundland and New England.
The game in one minute
- Deal five cards each, plus a kitty. You play in fixed partnerships, sitting across from your partner. The dealer also deals four extra cards face down in the middle: the kitty.
- Bid. Players bid 15, 20, 25 or 30 for the right to name trump. Bigger bid, bigger risk.
- Name trump and draw. The winning bidder names trump and picks up the kitty, then throws away cards to get back to five. Everyone else throws away the cards they don't want and is dealt new ones from the deck.
- Play five tricks. Each trick is worth 5 points, and the trick with the highest trump is worth 10. That's 30 points in every hand.
- Score. If the bidding team takes at least what it bid, it scores everything it took. If not, it's set and loses the amount of the bid. The first team to 120 wins.
The catch is the card order. In the trump suit the beats everything, then the , then the , which is a trump no matter which suit is named. Learn that and you've learned the hardest part of the game.
Start here
Every table plays it a little differently
45s has never had an official rulebook. The rules on this site are the ones most widely played in the Maritimes, and wherever tables commonly disagree we say so and show the alternatives. Before your first hand with new people, it's worth agreeing on a few things: the lowest bid, whether you must follow suit, and how plain-suit aces rank. The variants page has a checklist.