Calling the Twenty (Zwanzigerrufen) is Austria’s four-player entry tarock: 40 cards, 5 contracts, one difficulty dot, teachable in one sitting. Slovenian Tarok (slovenski tarok) is Slovenia’s national card game for three or four players: all 54 cards, 9 priced contracts, and a ledger where only the side of the Declarer, the player who wins the bidding, ever writes. Pick the Twenty for a light first game and Slovenian Tarok for exact, competitive scoring; both are worth owning.
One of these games is a lively chase. The other is a national sport. The Twenty is all gut feeling and momentum; Slovenian Tarok is played in nineteen clubs and ten thousand living rooms, with national rankings and a scoring ledger that remembers everything. Same card family, very different evenings.
What Zwanzigerrufen and Slovenian Tarok share
Both are calling games: the winner of the bidding names a card, and its holder becomes a secret partner, revealed only through play. Underneath, both are trick-taking games: in every trick, each player plays one card face up and the best card takes them all (new to trick-taking? start here). Both let anyone at the table score bonuses, Declarer or not, which is the family’s great mercy: even a losing side can walk away with something. One difference shows before the first bid: Slovenian Tarok deals all 54 cards, while the Twenty culls the deck to a lean 40, and that smaller deck is part of its speed.
By the numbers
The Twenty: 40 cards, 10 tricks per hand, 5 contracts (five different ways to play a hand), 3 bonuses, one difficulty dot of three, 45 of 88 Card Points to win (Card Points are what you capture in tricks), with won hands feeding a running session score to 50. Slovenian Tarok: all 54 cards, 12 tricks per hand, a 9-contract priced staircase from Klop up to playing without the talon (the face-down reserve of extra cards), 5 bonus families, all three difficulty dots, 36 of 70 for most contracts, session to 200. And the decks behave differently: with only five cards per color suit, the Twenty’s suits collapse fast into Taroks, the permanent trump suit whose cards beat every color card (we simulated the deals: some player is void in any given suit almost three times in four), while Slovenia’s eight-card suits keep color leads alive in more than half of all tricks. One game is a trump sprint, the other a long campaign.
Where the two games part: players, bidding, scoring
Player count and shape. Calling the Twenty is a fixed four-seat game, two against two once the call resolves. Slovenian Tarok is at its traditional best with three or four, and a fifth can join with the dealer sitting each hand out. If your group’s size wobbles from week to week, that flexibility alone may decide it.
The bidding. The Twenty’s auction is a quick claim with a simple hierarchy. Slovenia builds a staircase of exact prices instead: every contract has its number, from the cheap three-card-exchange games up through solos, the beggar (win no tricks at all), and contracts played without touching the talon. You always know exactly what a hand is worth before you play it.
The scoring temperament. This is the real divide. Calling the Twenty scores generously: deliver your contract, collect your bonuses, add them up. Slovenian Tarok keeps a signed ledger where only the Declarer’s side writes: win and your column climbs, fall and it carves downward. There is even a contract, Klop, where everyone plays alone and every Card Point you capture is bad news. And hanging over every hand is the Moon, the second-highest trump, which costs its careless owner dearly if an opponent captures it in a trick. The Slovenians, as we put it in the book, stripped away the baroque and kept the competition.
The learning curve. The Twenty can be taught in one sitting. Slovenian Tarok asks for two or three evenings before its distances and prices feel natural, and repays every one of them.
A word on the tools. Our deck ships presorted for a guided first game of Calling the Twenty, so if you are new to the family, that is the door the box itself opens. And for both games, but especially Slovenia’s tally, it helps that the Card Points are printed straight onto the cards as countable pips: a King shows its 4, a Queen her 3. At the end of a Slovenian hand, when 36 of the 70 points decides your whole column, you count what you see. Traditional decks make you memorize a value table first; here the deck does the remembering.
Which one is for you?
Choose Calling the Twenty if you want Tarok as a social evening: quick hands, easy laughter, a game that forgives. It is also, plainly, the better first game; it teaches the family’s core in its friendliest form, the natural pick for beginners.
Choose Slovenian Tarok if you want Tarok as a discipline: precise prices, real risk, a ledger that makes every hand matter. If you are the kind of player who enjoys knowing exactly how much a decision costs, Slovenia wrote that game for you.
The honest path for many tables is both, in order: learn on the Twenty, then let the ledger raise the stakes.
If your table looks different: Slovenian Tarok is the family’s best answer for exactly three players, so if you are three tonight, the question answers itself. Four players who want depth without the signed ledger should look at Calling the King, which sits between these two: read our Calling the King vs Slovenian Tarok comparison. And two players belong at Strawman’s table. The whole series is at all fifteen comparisons.
Quick answers
How many players do you need for Slovenian Tarok? Three or four is standard, and a fifth can join with the dealer sitting each hand out.
Which is better for beginners, Zwanzigerrufen or Slovenian Tarok? Calling the Twenty is the friendlier first game, and Slovenian Tarok rewards you two or three evenings later.
Both games, and four more, are taught from zero in the Tarok Exploration Book, played with one deck.