Calling the King (Königrufen) and Hungarian Tarokk are the tarock family’s two deepest four-player games, and both carry its top difficulty rating. Vienna’s King spreads its drama across a wide ladder of 7-plus contracts on 54 cards; Budapest’s Tarokk keeps just 4 contracts on 42 cards and pours everything into announcements, Kontra and Rekontra. Choose breadth or intensity; neither choice is a downgrade.
Vienna and Budapest, two capitals of the same vanished empire, each keeping its own masterpiece of the Tarok family alive in its coffeehouses. Both hide a partner behind a called card. Both attract the kind of player who enjoys thinking two tricks ahead. And they disagree, politely but completely, about where a card game’s drama should live.
By the numbers
Two dense stat lines, so first the unit: a trick is one round where each player plays a card face up and the best card takes them all (new to trick-taking? start here). Vienna: 54 cards, 12 tricks per hand, 7 basic contracts with a long House Rules shelf behind them, 3 basic bonuses of a much larger documented set, 36 of 70 Card Points to win (Card Points are what you capture in tricks). Budapest: 42 cards, 9 tricks per hand, 4 contracts, 6 announcement types plus Kontra, Rekontra and Subkontra (a doubling, a doubling back, and a third on top), 48 of 94 to win, counted by plain addition. Both wear all three difficulty dots. The deck arithmetic drives the different table feel: Hungary’s deck is 52 percent Taroks (the permanent trump suit, the cards that beat every color card) with five-card color suits, and in our deal simulations a color lead survives all three opponents in barely one trick of six, against better than half in Vienna’s eight-card suits. Budapest plays shorter, harder hands; Vienna plays longer, rounder ones.
Calling the King: drama in the contracts
Calling the King (Königrufen) puts its riches on the shelf before the hand begins. The auction offers a wide ladder: partnered games where you call a King to find your ally, solos, color contracts that abolish trump power, and the negative contracts where the goal is to win exactly one trick, or none at all. Choosing the right contract for your cards is the art; the family’s founding idea, that there is a contract for nearly any hand, reaches its fullest form here. Around it circles a flock of bonuses, each scoreable silently or announced. Austria put the game on its UNESCO heritage list in 2024; three centuries of play shaped that shelf.
Hungarian Tarokk: drama in the announcements
Hungarian Tarokk keeps the smallest contract ladder in this book: four rungs, all of which call the Tarok XX as partner. The Hungarians insist this makes it a simple game, which is true of the machine and false of the evening. Because once the contract is settled, the announcements begin: promises stacked on the hand while it is being played, from delivering the last trick with the Pagát, the lowest trump, to capturing the enemy’s XXI, their second-highest, the card that carries more fear than entire other games. Each announcement can be Kontra’d (doubled), Rekontra’d (doubled back), and the hand’s value snowballs. Even four passes leave a mark: the cards are thrown in, the same dealer deals again, and the whole next round of deals scores double. In Vienna you choose your drama off a menu; in Budapest you cook it at the table, with everyone shouting seasoning advice.
Talon, counting, and etiquette differences
The talon. The talon is the face-down reserve dealt aside at the start, and the two capitals split it differently. Vienna gives it to the Declarer, the auction winner, in measured portions. Budapest deals the whole table a share: everyone improves, everyone discards under law, and nobody gets to blame the deal alone.
The count. The King plays to 70 Card Points, 36 to win. Hungary counts to 94, 48 to win, by plain addition the whole way.
One family heirloom. Across this whole family runs a beloved exception called the Fairy Tale Trick, where the three top trumps collide and the humble Pagat wins. Hungarian Tarokk is the one game in this book that does not play it. Vienna keeps the fairy tale; Budapest, unsentimentally, cut it.
Etiquette. Hungary wraps its game in protocol: invitations smuggled inside bids, fixed announcement order, honour requirements, minimum holdings your hand must meet before you may play at all. The King has customs; Tarokk has a constitution.
Both games live and die on reading the table, which is where our deck’s plainest feature does its quietest work: clean white backgrounds and calm faces that read from across the table. In playtests we counted how often players lean in to identify cards, and the leaning drops measurably against busy traditional faces. The trump ladder helps too: the alpine animals rank the Taroks, stronger animal, stronger card, so mid-trick you rank trumps at a glance instead of squinting at numerals. When the enemy XXI is worth a fortune, recognizing it instantly is not a luxury.
Which one is for you?
Choose Calling the King if you want breadth: many contracts, many roads, a game whose variety keeps every deal fresh for decades. It rewards the planner, the player who loves choosing the perfect tool.
Choose Hungarian Tarokk if you want intensity: few contracts, towering stakes, and a psychological duel where courage and table-reading outscore card luck. It rewards the gambler with a calculator hidden in their sleeve.
If your table looks different: these are both summit games; the family’s gentle approach trail is Calling the Twenty, which teaches the XX-call Hungary uses inside the friendliest rules in the book. If Hungary’s sharp scoring tempts you but the announcements feel like much, Slovenian Tarok offers precision without the protocol; our Slovenian Tarok vs Hungarian Tarokk comparison takes that fork. The whole series waits at all fifteen comparisons.
Quick answers
What is the hardest tarock game? Calling the King and Hungarian Tarokk share the family’s top difficulty rating; the King asks for more rules memory, Tarokk for more table culture.
How many cards does Hungarian Tarokk use? 42 cards, dealt into 9-trick hands, counting to 94 Card Points with 48 needed to win.
Both games, and four more, are taught from zero in the Tarok Exploration Book, played with one deck.