Calling the Twenty (Zwanzigerrufen) and Calling the King (Königrufen) are both Austrian four-player tarock games in which the auction winner calls a card to find a secret partner. Both are trick-taking games: in each trick, every player plays one card face up, and the best card takes them all (new to trick-taking? start here). The Twenty is the easier game: 40 cards, 10 tricks, 5 contracts, one difficulty dot of three. The King plays all 54 cards over 12 tricks with 7 basic contracts and decades of depth; most tables learn the Twenty first and graduate.
Both run on the same beautiful idea: the auction winner names a card, and whoever holds it becomes their secret partner, revealed only through play. That moment, when a card hits the table and two players silently realize they are on the same side, is the shared heart of both games. Everything around that heart is built to a different scale, and the differences are not a matter of taste. You can count them.
Deck, tricks, contracts: the numbers first
The deck. Calling the Twenty (Zwanzigerrufen) culls the deck to 40 cards: 20 Taroks, the permanent trump suit whose cards beat every card of the four color suits, and just five cards in each color suit. Calling the King (Königrufen) plays all 54, including the full 22 Taroks, with eight cards per suit and a six-card talon, a small face-down reserve the auction winner may swap cards with.
The hand. A hand, one full deal played out, runs ten tricks in the Twenty, twelve in the King. Every hand of the Twenty is shorter before anyone even thinks fast.
The contracts. The Twenty teaches five contracts, five different things you can promise to do with your hand. The King teaches seven in its basic game, holds several bonuses back on purpose, and its House Rules page lists more contracts and variants than the Twenty has in total. That gap is the honest measure of the two games: our book rates the Twenty one difficulty dot out of three, and the King all three.
The bonuses. Three in the Twenty. The King also starts you on three, then its House Rules page names the rest waiting behind them: deeper trump feats, capture bonuses, Valat (winning every single trick), and the Kontra doublings, a dozen extras where the Twenty keeps a handful.
What the small deck does to the play
Here is the difference you feel in the first three tricks, and it comes straight from the arithmetic. With five cards per color suit spread over four ten-card hands, each player averages barely more than one card per suit. We ran the deals: in the Twenty, when a color suit is led (played first to a trick), all three opponents can play a matching card (“follow suit”) only about a quarter of the time, and for any given suit, the odds that somebody at the table holds none of it at all (“void”) from the deal are nearly three in four. In the King, with eight-card suits, a color lead survives intact more than half the time.
The consequence: the Twenty is a trump storm. Half its deck is Taroks, color suits collapse almost immediately, and the game becomes a fast, physical contest of trump timing. The King, with longer suits and a 41 percent trump share, lets color suits breathe: leads develop, voids arrive later, plans have time to exist. Same family, two entirely different trick rhythms, and neither is a flaw. One is a sprint by design; the other keeps the ball in play.
How much harder is Calling the King?
Say it plainly: the Twenty is the easier game. Its five contracts fit in your head after one evening, its bidding takes seconds, and with hands this quick, a beginner’s mistake is soon just one line on the score sheet. The King asks for real study. You will hold more cards, weigh a talon exchange under discard laws, choose from a wider ladder, including contracts where winning means losing tricks, or winning exactly one and not a single one more, and track announcements worth as much as the contracts themselves. There is more to memorize before you are fluent, and more to read at the table forever after. That is not harshness; it is the King’s offer. It is the game you can study for decades, played across Austria for more than two centuries with its rules first written down in 1827, and Austria entered it into its national UNESCO inventory of intangible cultural heritage in 2024 for exactly that depth.
One practical note if you are learning with our deck: it ships presorted for a guided first game, and that first game is Calling the Twenty. The box opens straight into the family’s easiest four-player door, and everything the Twenty teaches, the call, the contracts, the bonuses, transfers directly to the King. When you do move up, you will be glad the cards read from across the table: clean white backgrounds, calm faces. We playtested that, counting how often players lean in to identify the table, and the leaning drops with the clean design. In a game built on watching what everyone plays, that is not cosmetics.
Which one is for you?
Choose Calling the Twenty if you want to be playing within fifteen minutes, if your table likes momentum more than deliberation, or if this is your group’s first Tarok. Shorter hands, faster tricks, five contracts, one difficulty dot: it is the family’s easiest tarock game at four players and its entry game on purpose, and plenty of tables never feel the need to leave it.
Choose Calling the King if you enjoy games that reveal more the longer you play them, if a wide contract ladder sounds like freedom rather than homework, and if you are willing to memorize more up front for a game that repays it for years.
And if you are torn: play the Twenty first, then graduate. The two are not rivals so much as two chapters of the same story.
If your table looks different: only two of you tonight? Strawman is the family’s two-player duel. Six or more? Dappen deals one deck to a whole Black Forest table. And if the King’s ladder tempts you but you want sharper scoring, read our Calling the King vs Slovenian Tarok comparison next. Or browse all fifteen comparisons.
Quick answers
Is Zwanzigerrufen easier than Königrufen? Yes; Calling the Twenty has 5 contracts on a 40-card deck against the King’s 7-plus contracts on 54 cards, which is why it rates one difficulty dot of three to the King’s three.
Can I learn Königrufen without playing Zwanzigerrufen first? You can, but the Twenty teaches the same partner call and bonuses in a smaller frame, so most tables reach the King faster by starting there.
Both games, and four more, are taught from zero in the Tarok Exploration Book, played with one deck.