Barbu

Barbu is played with a deck of 52 cards, with 3 to 7 players, ideally 4.
The location and the age of its origins isn't well known, but one can consider it as inheriting its basic principles from hearts and especially bouillabaisse, extending them to make the game richer and more varied.
The goal of the game is to total as few points as possible, generally by avoiding to take high-valued cards.

Objectives

Each player has a list of contracts to meet. They can be chosen in any order, but all of them have to be played exactly once.
At the beginning of each round, the contract to play is chosen by the player who starts the first trick, in clockwise order.

Once all contracts of all players have been played, the winner is the player with the fewest number of points. Generally, the objective is to avoid taking the cards that are worth the most, except in certain particular contracts.

Game modes

There are several game modes, defining the contracts to play with:

Except in individual random mode, all players have the same list of contracts. A complete game consists of 3 to 8 contracts per player, giving a total of 12 to 32 rounds in a 4-player game.
To get the most out of barbu and appreciate the richness of the game, it is advised to play with at least 5 or 6 contracts per player. Games with 3 or 4 contracts are quicker, but some of the key contracts are absent.

Classic mode contracts

The classic mode contains the following contracts:

One can see that the five first contracts are identical to those of bouillabaisse. However, in bouillabaisse, contracts are played only once for the whole game and always in order, while in barbu they are played once per player and in any order.

Contract library

The list of all possible contracts is quite substantial, and this is what gives barbu its glory in random and custom modes.
Each contract has a positive and a negative version. Points are counted in one or the other direction according to the variant chosen.
It is also possible to reverse the card order. When the card order is reversed, 2s become the strongest cards, and aces the weakest ones.

Mini and maxi

Each trick is worth 5 points. Mini is the positive version in which one needs to take as few tricks as possible, while maxi is the negative version where each trick removes 5 points.
This contract is equivalent to the first round of bouillabaisse.

With or no suit

Each card of a defined suit is worth 5 points. In the classic mode, there's the contract "no heart" for example, in which you need to avoid taking hearts. In the negative version called "with suit", each card of the suit removes 5 points.
When this contract is active, it is forbidden to start a trick with the suit of the contract, unless having nothing else to play.
This contract is equivalent to the second round of bouillabaisse.

With or no card

The four cards of a given rank are worth 15 points each, for example queens in classic mode. Aces, kings, queens, jacks and 10s can be selected.
This contract is equivalent to the third round of bouillabaisse.

Barbu

In the classic mode, the king of hearts is worth 60 points. You can define the ace, king, queen, jack or 10 of any suit to be the barbu. The round is terminated as soon as the card has been played.
The negative version of this contract is called the barber. If the suit of the barbu is the same as the one of the "no suit" contract, then it is forbidden to start a trick with that suit unless having no other option.
This contract is equivalent to the fourth round of bouillabaisse.

Salad

The salad combines the mini, no suit, no card and barbu contracts together at the same time.
The negative version is called salad bonus and similarly combines maxi, with suit, with card and barber simultaneously.
This contract is equivalent to the fifth and sixth rounds of bouillabaisse.

Trump

The player who chooses this contract also chooses a trump suit. That suit wins over all other suits. Each trick then removes 5 points, hence the goal will be to take as many tricks as possible.
In the classic mode, it is mandatory to cut and overcut when possible, like in french tarot or belote. In the custom mode, it is possible to disable this obligation, like in jass.
The equivalent negative contract is called misere.

Contracts with tricks

One or more tricks among the two first and two last are worth points: once 60, twice 30, four times 15, 15 and then 45, or 45 and then 15, depending on the exact variant chosen.
The round is terminated as soon as all valuable tricks have been played.

Slam

When slam is activated, if a player takes all the points present in the played contract, then the points are subtracted from their score instead of being added.
Be careful that it is also available with negative contracts! For those, you will thus need to take as many as possible, but not everything.

Slam doesn't apply for barbu, trump, misere, and contracts on tricks. It is available for mini, maxi, salad, as well as for card and suit contracts.

Barbu with 3, 5, 6 or 7 players

Ideally, barbu is best played with 4 players. The following changes allow the players to play with 3 to 7 players:

Additionally, with 6 and 7 players, contracts are modified to better spread points across players. Barbu is worth 40 points instead of 60, cards of the "no card" contract are worth 10 points instead of 15, and tricks are worth 10, 20 and 30 points instead of 15, 30 and 45 in contracts with tricks.

Keyboard shortcuts summary

In the contract selection menu for custom mode, use the following keys to change the contracts to play: