Mexico feels like a game of nerve, and it is. But nerve works better with numbers behind it. This page has two kinds of numbers. The first kind is exact: how likely you are to hold a five-card suit, what the talon can bring you, how the trumps you are missing split between the two Gangsters. Those follow from counting card combinations, so they are true for every Mexico table in the world, including the one in your kitchen. The second kind comes from real play: 125,391 deals between players at Mexico Club tables, with the winning bid, the caller's ten cards, the trump suit and the tricks taken. They show what actually happens when people bid.
The deck in numbers
Mexico is played with 32 cards: 7, 8, 9, 10, Jack, Queen, King and Ace in each of the four suits, so every suit has eight cards. Each of the three players gets ten cards and two go face down into the talon. At the deal you see 10 of the 32 cards. After the auction, a caller who takes the talon has seen 12, and the 20 cards they have not seen are split exactly ten and ten between the two Gangsters. That last fact makes Mexico unusually easy to reason about: once you have taken the talon, every unseen card is in one of two hands of the same size.
All the probabilities in the next four sections are exact. They come from counting every possible combination of cards, not from a simulation, and they assume nothing except a well-shuffled deck.
What you are dealt
Take any one suit, say hearts. With 8 hearts among 32 cards and 10 cards in your hand, you hold 2.5 hearts on average. Two or three is normal; five is already rare.
| Cards of the suit | Chance |
|---|---|
| 0 | 3.0% |
| 1 | 16.2% |
| 2 | 31.9% |
| 3 | 30.0% |
| 4 | 14.6% |
| 5 | 3.7% |
| 6 | 0.5% |
| 7 or 8 | 0.03% |
What matters for bidding is your longest suit, because that is usually where your trumps come from. About two hands in three have a suit of four or more cards. A five-card suit turns up in one deal out of six, and a six-card suit in roughly one deal out of fifty.
| Longest suit | Exactly | This long or longer |
|---|---|---|
| 3 cards | 31.6% | 100% |
| 4 cards | 51.8% | 68.4% |
| 5 cards | 14.7% | 16.7% |
| 6 cards | 1.8% | 1.9% |
| 7 or 8 cards | 0.1% | 0.1% |
The most common shape of a Mexico hand is 4-3-2-1 (32.7% of deals), followed by the flat 3-3-2-2 (22.9%), 4-2-2-2 (9.5%), 3-3-3-1 (8.7%) and 5-2-2-1 (6.5%). One hand in eight (12.1%) has a void, a suit you do not hold at all, which is handy for cutting with trump later.
Aces are the other half of a hand's strength. You get at least one ace in four deals out of five, and two or more in a little over one deal in three.
| Aces | Chance |
|---|---|
| 0 | 20.3% |
| 1 | 42.8% |
| 2 | 28.9% |
| 3 | 7.3% |
| 4 | 0.6% |
What the talon brings
Once you have looked at your hand, the two talon cards are two random cards out of the 22 you cannot see. So the chance that one particular card is in the talon, say the ace of your long suit, is 2 in 22: 9.1%, about one time in eleven. Before anyone looks at their hand, the talon holds at least one ace 23.8% of the time.
The more cards of a suit you hold, the fewer are left to come from the talon:
| You hold | At least one more | Both talon cards |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | 48.1% | 6.5% |
| 3 | 41.1% | 4.3% |
| 4 | 33.8% | 2.6% |
| 5 | 26.0% | 1.3% |
| 6 | 17.7% | 0.4% |
The same counting works for aces. If you hold none, the talon has at least one 33.8% of the time; with one ace in hand, 26.0%; with two, 17.7%; with three, 9.1%. The lesson is simple: bid on the cards in your hand and treat the talon as a bonus. A bid that only works if the talon brings a specific card works about one time in eleven.
At real tables the talon does help, a little. Callers kept both talon cards in 58.3% of deals and one of them in 38.2%; only 3.5% of the time were both talon cards thrown straight back. Keeping a card does not mean it was a great card, only that it was better than the worst card in hand.
Where the missing trumps are
After the talon you know exactly how many trumps are out: eight minus the ones you hold (and minus any you discarded). They sit in the Gangsters' twenty cards, ten each. This is the same question bridge players ask about suit splits, and the answers are just as surprising.
| You hold | Missing | Split |
|---|---|---|
| 3 trumps | 5 | 3-2: 69.7% · 4-1: 27.1% · 5-0: 3.3% |
| 4 trumps | 4 | 2-2: 41.8% · 3-1: 49.5% · 4-0: 8.7% |
| 5 trumps | 3 | 2-1: 78.9% · 3-0: 21.1% |
| 6 trumps | 2 | 1-1: 52.6% · 2-0: 47.4% |
| 7 trumps | 1 | always with one Gangster |
Three things stand out. With four trumps, the four missing ones split 3-1 more often than 2-2, and more often than not (58.2%) one Gangster holds three or all four of them, as many as you have left after a round of trumps. With five trumps, one deal in five a single Gangster holds all three missing trumps and can cut in on your long suit. And with six, the two missing trumps are together almost half the time (47.4%), so drawing them can take two rounds instead of one.
Mexico is different, because the talon stays face down and you have only seen your own ten cards. The missing trumps can be in either Gangster's hand or in the talon, where they do no harm. With six trumps in a Mexico hand, the two missing trumps are both with the same Gangster 39.0% of the time and split one each 43.3% of the time; one or both are in the talon 17.7% of the time. With five trumps, one Gangster holds all three missing trumps 15.6% of the time. With seven, the last trump is safely in the talon 9.1% of the time.
Will the king fall under your ace?
You hold the ace of a suit but not the king. If you lead the ace, the king falls only if its owner has no other card of that suit. That depends on how many cards of the suit you cannot see:
| Cards of the suit you have not seen (king included) | King is alone | King is guarded |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | 52.6% | 47.4% |
| 3 | 26.3% | 73.7% |
| 4 | 12.4% | 87.6% |
| 5 | 5.4% | 94.6% |
| 6 | 2.2% | 97.8% |
Unless the suit is almost gone, the ace takes its trick and the king survives. Count the king as a trick for the Gangsters, unless you can cut it with a trump later.
Real tables: winning bids and how often they are made
Now for real play. The numbers below cover 125,391 deals between players at Mexico Club tables, from games played up to October 2026. For every deal we know the winning bid, the caller's final ten cards (after the talon and the discard), the trump suit and the tricks each player took.
| Winning bid | Deals | Share | Made | Caller's avg. tricks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | 35,459 | 28.3% | 73.1% | 5.46 |
| 6 | 65,197 | 52.0% | 84.9% | 6.87 |
| 7 | 20,197 | 16.1% | 81.5% | 7.63 |
| 8 | 3,621 | 2.9% | 70.1% | 8.06 |
| 9 | 651 | 0.5% | 55.1% | 8.24 |
| 10 | 110 | 0.09% | 13.6% | 7.22 |
| Mexico | 156 | 0.12% | 42.9% | 7.63 |
| All | 125,391 | 100% | 80.3% | 6.64 |
Six is the normal contract. More than half of all deals are played at 6, and a 6 is made 84.9% of the time.
Why 5 is made less often than 6 and 7. The first bidder must open with at least 5 and cannot say NEXT. When both other players then say NEXT, that forced 5 becomes the contract, often with a hand nobody wanted. That is why 5 has the lowest success rate of the common bids (73.1%).
A made bid pays the tricks, not the bid. A caller who bid 6 took 6.87 tricks on average, almost a full trick more than needed. In Mexico a made bid scores the tricks you actually take, so bidding 6 and taking seven tricks scores the same 7 points as bidding 7. Bidding higher buys you the contract in a contested auction. It does not raise your score, and it does raise the price of a fall.
Ten versus Mexico. A plain 10 was made only 13.6% of the time, worse than Mexico's 42.9%, even though the 10 caller takes the talon. The reason is in how the bids arise. A 10 usually comes out of an auction fight: someone raises past a 9 just to win the contract, with a hand that was never built for all ten tricks. Mexico is called by choice, with an exceptional hand, and it still fails more often than it succeeds.
How many trumps a bid needs
After the talon and the discard, almost every caller held four trumps (48.1% of deals) or five (37.0%). Six trumps came up in 9.8% of deals, three in 3.9%, seven in 1.0%. Up to five trumps, each extra trump was worth more than a trick on average: 4.4 tricks with three trumps, 6.1 with four, 7.2 with five. After that it was less: 8.0 with six, 8.5 with seven.
| Trumps | Bid 5 | Bid 6 | Bid 7 | Bid 8–10 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | 32.7% | 50.5% | 25.3% | – |
| 4 | 72.2% | 78.0% | 64.8% | 41.5% |
| 5 | 93.3% | 91.7% | 83.4% | 65.3% |
| 6 | 99.5% | 98.1% | 92.6% | 76.5% |
| 7 | – | 100% | 98.7% | 82.3% |
Four trumps are usually enough for a 5 or a 6 (72–78%), but a 7 on four trumps failed about one time in three. Five trumps made a 6 close to safe (91.7%) and a 7 good (83.4%). For 8 or more, even five trumps failed one time in three, and six trumps still failed almost one time in four.
Mexico calls are few (156), so read these with care: with four trumps, Mexico succeeded 22.5% of the time (40 calls), with five 57.1% (70 calls), with six 71.4% (21 calls).
What aces are worth
An ace is the closest thing to a sure trick. Counting aces in any suit, trumps included, in the caller's final hand:
| Aces | Bid 5 | Bid 6 | Bid 7 | Bid 8–10 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 31.3% | 48.0% | 33.0% | 5.4% |
| 1 | 62.1% | 71.2% | 64.8% | 37.7% |
| 2 | 85.4% | 86.7% | 83.7% | 67.6% |
| 3 | 96.1% | 94.4% | 92.7% | 87.2% |
| 4 | 100% | 98.4% | 96.2% | 95.1% |
The first ace matters most: a 6 without an ace was made less than half the time, with one ace 71.2%, with two 86.7%. For high bids, aces are not optional. Without an ace, a bid of 8 or more succeeded 5.4% of the time. A 6 with no ace still did better than a 5 with no ace (48.0% against 31.3%) because nobody is forced to bid 6: a caller who chose 6 without aces usually had long trumps instead.
The top trumps count double. In bids of 6, a caller who held neither the ace nor the king of trumps made it 62.6% of the time, one of them 79.0%, and both 91.4%. For Mexico the picture is stark: in 35 calls with no ace or a single ace, Mexico never succeeded. With two aces it worked 39.3% of the time and with three 67.9%.
The Gangsters' side
Four bids in five were made, so the Gangsters broke one in five. They also had their own risk. Here is how often a Gangster finished a deal without a single trick:
| Winning bid | Gangster with zero tricks |
|---|---|
| 5 | 7.6% |
| 6 | 18.2% |
| 7 | 29.8% |
| 8 | 41.2% |
| 9 | 48.5% |
| Mexico | 52.2% |
| All bids | 17.9% |
With Easy scoring, used at public tables and in mini games, a Gangster with no tricks scores 0 and loses nothing. With Normal scoring, used in tournaments and in private rooms that choose it, zero tricks costs the amount of the bid. Against a 7, three Gangsters in ten took no trick, which in Normal scoring is −7 each. So in Normal games, a Gangster without a trick should take the first safe chance to win one: the difference between zero tricks and one trick is the size of the bid plus one.
The trump suit itself is no clue. Clubs were trumps in 24.7% of deals, diamonds, hearts and spades in 25.1% each. Callers pick the suit they are long in, and every suit is long equally often.
How to read these numbers
Real results are not perfect play. They include tired evenings, misread signals and auction pressure, so a strong player will make bids more often than these averages. Most of the deals were played with Normal scoring, where a fall costs double, so callers were cautious; public tables have used Easy scoring since October 2026, and the numbers may shift a little. Where a group is small, the table says so or leaves it out.
Rules of thumb
- A four-card suit is the normal hand: 68% of hands have one. A five-card suit comes once in six deals.
- With four cards of a suit, the talon brings a fifth only one time in three. Bid on your hand and treat the talon as a bonus.
- Four trumps carry a 5 or a 6 most of the time but a 7 only two times in three. Five trumps make a 6 safe and a 7 good.
- Count your aces: with two, a 6 is made 87% of the time; with none, under half.
- The ace and king of trumps together make a 6 a 91% proposition.
- With four trumps, the missing four split 3-1 more often than 2-2.
- A plain 10 is almost always a mistake (13.6%). Mexico wants five or more trumps and three aces.
- A made bid scores the tricks you take, so overbidding earns nothing. It only makes the fall bigger.
Put the numbers to work in the bidding guide, the guide to calling Mexico and the guide to the talon and choosing trump.