Calling the Twenty (Zwanzigerrufen) is the Austrian four-player entry tarock; Dappen is the Black Forest game that seats six to eight players with one 54-card deck. The Twenty hides a called partner; Dappen sends one player, the Dapper, against everyone else in the open. Choose by head count: four chairs mean the Twenty, six or more mean Dappen, and both are full games rather than fillers.
Count the chairs first, in other words, and then the character. The Twenty is quick and warm, the classic Austrian foursome. Dappen comes from a handful of Black Forest villages where the winters are long and the tables are longer, and almost no card game of this depth seats what it seats. If you regularly host more than four, Dappen is not just an alternative; it may be the reason you bought the deck.
By the numbers
One unit before the stats: a trick is a single round where each player plays one card face up and the best card takes the pile (new to trick-taking? start here). The Twenty: 4 players, 40 cards, 10 tricks per hand, 5 contracts, 3 bonuses, one difficulty dot, 45 of 88 Card Points to win (Card Points are what you capture in tricks). Dappen: 6 to 8 players, all 54 cards, short hands of 7 tricks (six players) or 6 (seven players), 2 contracts plus the Challenge (a defender’s direct dare) and the Ultimo declarations (promising a specific final-trick feat), two difficulty dots, and the Dapper’s target of holding the whole table under 40 Card Points. The wildest number is invisible until you simulate the deals: at a six-player Dappen table, a color card led (played first) to a trick gets matched in suit by everyone in roughly one trick in twenty, and at seven players almost never. Taroks, the permanent trump suit whose 22 cards beat every color card, decide nearly everything, which is exactly why players holding strong Taroks are obliged to play.
Two different answers to “who is on my side?”
Calling the Twenty answers with a whisper. The auction winner calls the Tarok XX, and whoever holds it becomes a secret partner. Half the fun is deduction: partnerships surface slowly, through played cards, and the table rearranges itself in your head mid-hand.
Dappen answers with a shout. One player, the Dapper, takes on everybody else at once. There is no secret about it: it is one hero (or one drafted volunteer) against a wall of five, six, seven opponents who play as one team with one heartbeat. Where the Twenty is a game of hidden alliances, Dappen is a siege.
Bidding, the Dapp, and scoring side by side
Bidding. The Twenty runs a compact auction: a quick round of “I’ll play it” claims with a fixed pecking order. Dappen replaces the ladder with two quick yes-or-no rounds: first “Solo!” (play your dealt hand, touch nothing) and then “Dapp!” (claim the twelve-card pot in the middle and rebuild your hand from it). And Dappen has a rule the rest of the family should envy: someone ALWAYS plays. Hold strong trumps and you may not pass; if everyone ducks, the second-to-last speaker is drafted. Timid tables do not exist in Dappen; they get drafted.
The middle of the table. The Twenty plays the cards as dealt. Dappen’s twelve-card Dapp is the game’s engine: claiming it means remaking your hand almost from scratch, and judging what those twelve unseen cards might do for you is the game’s central gamble.
Winning. The Twenty’s Declarer side hunts 45 of 88 Card Points. The Dapper instead tries to hold the entire table under 40, and climbs a sliding reward tier the lower they keep them, with an instant win for the rare crushing hand. Five or six players sharing one defense means every defender matters, which is precisely why the game works at sizes where most games dissolve into chaos.
Direction, of all things. Dappen runs counter-clockwise. Trivial on paper, delightful in practice, and your table will get it wrong exactly once.
At a seven-player table, one deck feature stops being cosmetic: legibility. Our cards keep clean white backgrounds and calm faces because we counted, in playtesting, how often players lean forward to read the table. With busy traditional faces, a big table becomes a yoga class. With these, the trick reads from your chair. And since Dappen tables tend to be wherever the people are, a kitchen, a cabin, a long pub table, it helps that the deck travels light: a smaller, lighter package than the competing decks we have weighed, easy to bring to the party rather than hosting one around it.
Which one is for you?
Choose Calling the Twenty if four is your number and you want the family’s standard entry: it is the game our presorted deck and guided first round are built around, and the rest of the family opens up from it naturally.
Choose Dappen if your evenings are crowded. It is the family’s big-table specialist, a real card game for 6 players and more, medium in difficulty, loud in character, and one of the few games anywhere that gives seven people a real stake in every single hand.
If your table looks different: exactly four players wanting more depth than the Twenty should read our Calling the Twenty vs Calling the King comparison. Three players belong in Slovenian Tarok. Two, at Strawman. And if you fall for Dappen’s one-against-everyone drama but only have four chairs, Calling the King’s solo contracts scratch the same itch at a smaller scale. The rest of the series is at all fifteen comparisons.
Quick answers
How many players can Dappen handle? Six to eight with one 54-card deck; with eight, the dealer sits the round out.
Does someone always have to play in Dappen? Yes; players holding strong trumps may not pass, and if everyone ducks, the second-to-last speaker is drafted as Dapper.
Both games, and four more, are taught from zero in the Tarok Exploration Book, played with one deck.