Tarot (game)
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The French game of Tarot should not be confused with the use of Tarot cards for divination. See Tarot for more information on this use.
Tarot is a trick-taking card game played throughout France, which uses a traditional 78-card Tarot deck instead of the standard poker deck.
Tarots_cards_deal.jpg
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The Deck
The game of Tarot is played using a 78-card set following the Tarot de Marseille arrangement, divided into a numbered 21-card series of atouts (trump cards), one joker, and 4 suits (spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs), divided into 10 numbers from 1 to 10, and then the face cards of jack (valet), knight (cavalier), queen (dame) and king (roi). The three cards known as oudlers or bouts: the joker, the 1 of trumps, and the 21 of trumps are of particular importance.
Some pictures of 19th century life events are generally printed on the trump cards, though this is not an obligation and has no incidence on the game play.
Rules
For 3 or 4 players (5 with a simple variation). The 4-people variant is usually considered the most challenging and is the one played in competitions.
Setup
Deal out the entire deck; deal equal hands to each of the players, plus six cards to the "dog" (chien in French, also commonly translated as "kitty"), a face-down pile in the middle of the table. Each player is dealt his cards three at a time, and the dog is dealt three cards at a time on the second and third time around.
Players inspect their hands, and the player who thinks he has the best hand ‘calls the dog,’ and takes the dog into his hand after showing it to all the other players. He then moves any six cards directly from his hand to his score pile. This player becomes the ‘chief,’ and the rest of the players are playing against him; any cards that the chief scores go in his score pile, while any cards scored by other players go in a communal score pile.
Bidding
The players look at the cards they have been dealt, and a round of bidding begins, starting from the player to the right of the dealer. One may only bid higher than the precedent bidders.
The bids are, in increasing importance:
- prise (take)
- garde (guard)
- garde sans (guard without (meaning: without the kitty))
- garde contre (guard against (meaning: against the kitty))
In earlier rules, still played outside of competitions, there existed, in place of the prise, two bids, in increasing importance: the petite (small) and the pousse (push).
Main Phase
The player to the right of the chief leads the first trick, and play proceeds counter-clockwise, with every player adding a card from his hand to the trick. Every subsequent trick is led by the player who took the last trick. The leader of a trick must play a pip or face card, unless he doesn't have any, at which point he must play a trump.
Once the leader of a trick has played a card, everyone else must follow suit. If a player can not follow suit, he must play a trump card, which beats everything except higher-valued trump (The Fool is valued lowest, and the World is valued highest). If he has no pip or face card matching suit and no trump, he must ‘trash’ a card into the trick. If the trick is led with a trump, all other players must play a trump card, or trash a card if they can not. Trashed cards are not considered for taking the trick, but are scored normally.
The only card with a special effect is the Fool, called the ‘excuse.’ When you play the excuse, you immediately take the top card from your opponent’s score pile (from the communal pile if you’re the chief, or from the chief's pile if you’re anyone else), and put it in your score pile.
When the last trick has been played, the game ends.
Scoring
The chief needs to score at least 51 points to win. The Fool, Magician, and World are special scoring cards called ‘outlers.’ Each outler you have reduces your target score by five. Kings are worth five points, Queens are worth four, Knights are worth three and Pages are worth two. All other cards (including outlers) are worth one point. If the chief beats his target score, he adds his score to his total, otherwise all of the other players add his score to their totals. The two score piles are stacked (there is no shuffling in Tarot except for the ‘soft shuffling’ that occurs during play) and the player to the right of the last dealer deals the next hand.
Five-Player Variant
The dog is only dealt three cards. After calling the dog and scoring his three cards, the chief calls the King of any suit. Whoever has that King becomes the chief's partner, and plays with him against the other players.
Called Variants
The normal game is called ‘en-petite.’ When a player declares himself chief, he may also change the variant from en-petite to ‘engarde’, ‘engarde sans’ or ‘engarde contre.’
- Engarde is played no differently, but the chief wins or loses double the usual stake.
- Engarde sans: the dog goes directly into the chief’s score pile, and no-one gets to see it until the end of the hand. The score is counted normally against the target number, but it is worth double the engarde score to whoever wins the hand.
- Engarde contre: the dog goes directly into the communal score pile, without being shown until the end of the hand. The score is counted normally against the target number, but it is worth triple the engarde score to whoever wins the hand.
See also
External links
- Rules of the game (http://www.pagat.com/tarot/frtarot.html)
- Official rules of the game (http://www.ff-tarot.com/formation/reglement%20anglais.htm)da:Tarot
eo:Taroko fr:Tarot nl:Tarot (kaartspel) sl:Francoski tarok sv:Tarotkortlek