Australia's national card game: bid how many tricks your partnership will take, name trumps, and be the first side to 500, without sinking to −500, which loses.
Five Hundred is played by four players in two partnerships, partners sitting opposite: here you and North play against West and East. It uses 43 cards: A, K, Q, J, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5 and 4 in the red suits, A down to 5 in the black suits, and one Joker. Each player gets ten cards, and three go face down to the kitty. Play is clockwise.
Starting left of the dealer, players bid a number of tricks from six to ten with a trump suit or No Trumps. Each bid must be higher than the last: more tricks, or the same number in a higher suit, with suits ranking ♠, ♣, ♦, ♥ and then No Trumps. Misère, a bid to lose every trick playing alone, ranks above every seven bid and below every eight, and can only be bid after someone has bid seven. Open Misère, played with your cards face up after the first trick, ranks between ten diamonds and ten hearts. Once you pass you are out of the auction, which ends when all but one player have passed.
The contractor picks up the kitty, discards three cards and leads. You must follow suit if you can. The highest trump wins, otherwise the highest card of the suit led. In a trump contract the Joker is the highest trump, followed by the Jack of trumps (the right bower) and the other Jack of the same colour (the left bower), which counts as a trump.
Five Hundred was invented in the United States as an extension of Euchre, with ten cards each, a kitty, and trumps chosen by auction instead of by turning up a card. According to Wikipedia, it arose before 1900 and was promoted by the US Playing Card Company, which copyrighted and marketed a deck with a set of rules in 1904. It was very popular in America until auction and then contract bridge took over.
In Australia it became the national card game, usually played four-handed in partnerships with a 43-card pack whose Joker shows a kookaburra, which is why Australians call it the bird. A similar game is played in New Zealand, and different rules survive in parts of North America.
The rules here follow pagat.com's main description, the Australian four-handed game, written in our own words.
Five Hundred is a free browser version of the classic partnership card game, played with a computer partner against two computer opponents, with a daily game and online leaderboards. There's nothing to download and no sign-up.