It is played with a deck of cards with comical illustrations of eleven different types of beans of varying scarcity, which the players are trying to plant and sell in order to earn money.

[1] The principal restriction is that players may only farm two or three types of beans at once (limited by the number of fields they own), but they obtain beans of all different types randomly from the deck and so must engage in trade with the other players to be successful.

The name Bohnanza is a pun on the words Bohne (German for "bean") and bonanza (an English word for "an exceptionally large and rich mineral deposit"[2] as well as a reference to the long-running Western show Bonanza).

^3 In German, blaue Bohnen is slang for bullets, explaining the illustration of the blue bean dressed as a cowboy.

A rule unique to Bohnanza is that cards in hand must be kept in the order in which they are dealt at all times; they may not be rearranged.

To harvest a field, a player counts the beans in it and consults the list to determine the largest amount of coins he or she can obtain from them.

In case of a tie, the player with the most cards remaining in their hand wins the game.

Rules adapted from description at ToothyWiki:Bohnanza, as permitted by ToothyWiki:CopyrightMatters Uwe Rosenberg and Hanno Girke have designed a number of expansions to the game, some of which were released as limited editions by Lookout Games.