Calling the Twenty (Zwanzigerrufen) is the four-player entry tarock; Strawman (Strohmandeln) is the family’s 2 player tarock game, played across face-up piles. Both carry the family’s lowest difficulty rating, so both are fine first games. The real choice is chairs: four players get the fast social chase, two players get a long, open-information duel.
These are the two gentlest games in the Tarok family, and they solve two different evenings. What Strawman offers is something rarer than a two-player fallback: a real trick-taking duel (a trick: each player plays one card face up and the best card takes them all; new to trick-taking? start here) with an open market of cards between the players.
But suppose you could have either. Then it gets interesting.
By the numbers
The Twenty: 4 players, 40 cards, 10 four-card tricks per hand, 5 contracts, 3 bonuses, 45 of 88 Card Points to win (Card Points are what you capture in tricks), with won hands feeding a session score played to 50. Strawman: 2 players, all 54 cards in play, 15-card hands plus three four-card piles each, 27 two-card tricks per hand, 2 contracts, 3 bonuses, 36 of 70 to win, and a race to 11 Victory Points, the running match score that won hands feed. Both wear one difficulty dot of three, and the shapes could not differ more: the Twenty’s hand is over in ten quick tricks, while a single Strawman hand runs nearly three times as long and half its cards pass through the open piles on the table.
Two kinds of easy: which is better for beginners?
Both games carry the family’s lowest difficulty marks, but they are easy in opposite ways.
Calling the Twenty is easy because it is lean. One central call (whoever holds the Tarok XX becomes your secret partner), a short list of contracts (a contract: something you promise to do with your hand), 88 Card Points on the table and 45 to win. The game moves at the speed of conversation. You learn it in one sitting, and most of what you learn is instinct: when to bid, when to let a trick go, when your unknown partner is winking at you through their play.
Strawman is easy to start but slow to exhaust. Each player gets a large hand, and between you sit the namesake Straw Men: small piles of cards, their top cards face up, playable as if they were in your hand. Every card you spend from the table flips a new one. Your hand is not something you were dealt; it is something you build, trick by trick, from a market both players can see. Chess players tend to smile the first time the cascade turns over a card that changes everything.
What the difference feels like
Social temperature. The Twenty is loud. Four players, table talk, quick scores. Strawman is quiet and intense: one opponent, long hands, and a slowly turning battlefield you both study. One is a party; the other is a conversation.
Luck and control. With four players and hidden partnerships, the Twenty has delicious chaos in it. Strawman shows you half the game face up, so a bigger share of every hand belongs to your own good judgment. If a loss must always be somebody’s fault, Strawman will name names.
Session shape. The Twenty plays to 50 Victory Points across many quick hands. Strawman’s traditional race to 11 makes a tight, satisfying match: the two-player evening has a finish line you can see.
For beginners at either game, two features of our deck earn their keep here. It ships presorted for a guided first game of Calling the Twenty, so a brand-new table can deal its first real hand within minutes of opening the box. And the number pips carry small direction arrows showing which way each suit ranks, which quietly defuses the family’s classic trap: red suits rank their number cards upside down compared to black. In Strawman, where half the cards sit face up on the table for long stretches, being able to read a card’s rank direction at a glance keeps the duel about strategy instead of memory.
Which one is for you?
Choose Calling the Twenty if your Tarok life happens at a full table: family evenings, four friends, quick rounds. It is the standard first game of the family, and the one the rest of this book keeps referring back to.
Choose Strawman if your most reliable opponent is one person: a partner, a sibling, a regular rival. It is not a compromise for lacking players; it is one of the family’s most strategic games in its own right, and its bonuses can be scored silently or announced for double, a whisper-or-declare dilemma that cuts far deeper when there is only one opponent to warn.
Many households need no choice at all: the Twenty for game night, Strawman for the quiet Tuesday.
If your table looks different: three players point to Slovenian Tarok, and a big table of six to eight points to Dappen, the Black Forest crowd-pleaser. If Strawman’s open information appeals to you but you have four players, look at Calling the King, where reading the table is the whole art: our Calling the King vs Strawman comparison walks the line between them. Every pairing is mapped at all fifteen comparisons.
Quick answers
Is there a 2 player tarock game? Yes, Strawman (Strohmandeln) is the family’s dedicated two-player game, using all 54 cards with face-up Straw Man piles between the players.
Which tarock game is easiest to learn? Calling the Twenty and Strawman share the family’s lowest difficulty rating, so pick by player count: four chairs or two.
Both games, and four more, are taught from zero in the Tarok Exploration Book, played with one deck.