French Tarot (jeu de tarot) is one of France’s most popular card games: 78 cards, usually 4 players, a lone taker against three defenders, and a national federation running tournaments. The Central European Tarok (Tarock) family plays 54 cards across six different games for 2 to 8 players. Both descend directly from the trionfi decks of 15th-century Italy, the decks that invented the trump suit, and the scholarly literature (Dummett and McLeod’s standard history) treats them as two branches of the same tree. Sibling rivalry, then, and a friendly one.
By the numbers
| French Tarot | Tarok family | |
|---|---|---|
| Deck | 78 cards: 4 suits of 14, 21 trumps, the excuse | 54 cards: 4 suits of 8, 21 Taroks + Skus |
| Players | 3, 4 or 5 (4 is standard) | 2 to 8 across six games |
| The fool card | the excuse: exempts you from following suit, wins nothing | the Skus: the highest trump in the game |
| Winning | floating target: 36 to 56 points depending on “bouts” held | fixed target: 36 of 70 Card Points in most games |
| Bidding | four bids that multiply the score x1/x2/x4/x6 | ladders of named contracts, incl. winning by losing |
| Partner | called king, but only at 5 players | called partner standard at 4 (Twenty, King), plus solo and big-table games |
The fool: the family’s best argument
Nothing shows the two branches’ divergence like their treatment of the deck’s strangest card. In France, the excuse is an escape hatch: play it any time to dodge following suit, but it wins nothing. In the Tarok family, the same card became the Skus, the highest trump of all, the card everything else fears. Card historians classify the branches by exactly this difference; an 18th-century Central European rule change promoted the fool to the top of the ladder, and the games have felt different ever since. If you have ever held the excuse and wished it could FIGHT, the Tarok family is your answer.
Where else they part
The floating target. French Tarot’s win threshold moves with the three “bouts” (the 1 and 21 of trumps and the excuse): hold all three in your tricks and 36 points wins; hold none and you need 56. It is an elegant system that makes those three cards the story of every hand. Tarok fixes the threshold (36 of 70 in most games) and moves the drama into the contract ladder and the bonuses instead, including the family’s signature: bonuses that defenders and losing sides can score too.
Partnership as standard equipment. France reserves the called-king partnership for the five-player variant. In the Tarok heartland the called partner IS the standard four-player game: Calling the King (Königrufen, in Austria’s national UNESCO inventory of intangible cultural heritage since 2024) is built entirely around the whodunit of the hidden ally. If the five-player French game is secretly your favorite version, you are a Tarok player who has not met the family yet.
One game versus six. France polished one great game, and its federation (the FFT, founded 1973, with hundreds of clubs) runs it in duplicate tournaments like bridge. The Tarok branch went wide instead: a two-player duel, a three-player national game, two four-player summits, a big-table game for eight. Same trumps, six shapes.
Both branches share the counting ritual at the end of every hand, and both traditionally expect you to know the card values by heart. There the publisher in us intervenes: on our deck the Card Point values are printed on the cards as countable pips, so the family’s arithmetic becomes counting rather than recall, whichever branch you come from.
Which one is for you?
Stay with French Tarot if you have a steady four, love the bouts drama, and want a single game with a deep national tournament scene behind it.
Come to Tarok if you want the fool promoted to power, partnerships as the standard game, contracts for weak hands, and one deck that covers 2 to 8 players. French Tarot players convert quickly: the trumps, the counting and the lone-taker instincts all transfer, and the entry game will feel familiar within a hand (new to all of it? start from zero).
Quick answers
Are French Tarot and Tarock the same game? No, they are two branches of the same 15th-century Italian family: France plays one 78-card game where the fool is an excuse, Central Europe plays a family of 54-card games where the fool (Skus) is the highest trump.
Can I play Tarok with a French Tarot deck? Not directly; the decks differ (78 vs 54 cards, different suit lengths), though the skills transfer almost entirely.
Six Tarok games are taught from zero in the Tarok Exploration Book, played with one deck.