Dappen

The goal: win Victory Points, one against everyone: claim the Dapp, rebuild your hand from it, and hold the whole table under 40 Card Points: their empty piles are your ladder.

Down in the Black Forest, where the winters are long and the tables are longer, they solved a problem the Alps never quite managed: how to deal one deck to seven people and give every single one of them a stake in the hand. The answer sits in the middle of the table, twelve cards deep, face-down and patient: the Dapp. One player will claim it, remake their hand with it, and take on everyone else at once. The rest lean in as one team with one heartbeat. It is loud where Königrufen is quiet, broad where Strawman is narrow, and it ends, always, with somebody counting a fat pile of cards while five neighbors watch like hawks.

The Cards

Dappen uses the full deck, all 54 cards. Ranking and pips work as always; nothing is culled, and nothing changes.

The Preparation

Six to eight players sit around the table, and play runs counter-clockwise. With eight at the table, the dealer sits the hand out and deals for the other seven.

Before anything is dealt to a soul, the dealer counts 12 cards face-down into the middle: the Dapp. The rest are dealt out: 7 cards each with six players, 6 cards each with seven. The deal passes to the right after every hand.

The Bidding

Dappen swaps the usual bidding ladder for two quick rounds of yes-or-no, starting right of the dealer and running counter-clockwise, and someone ALWAYS ends up playing. Nobody holds special Forehand rights here, there is no standing (the seat-order right from Core Concepts never fires), and there is no Kontra: the Challenge fills both jobs.

Round one: Solo. Starting right of the dealer, each player in turn says “Solo!” or “pass”. The first Solo ends the bidding at once: that player is the Dapper, plays the hand exactly as dealt, and never touches the Dapp. There is no Challenge against a Solo. If everyone passes, round two begins.

Round two: Dapp. If nobody called Solo, the same order runs again, now for the workhorse contract, the Dapp. Each player in turn says “Dapp!” or “pass”. The first player to say “Dapp!” is the Dapper for now: once the bidding is over, they will take the twelve face-down cards in the middle into their hand and rebuild from them. Their bid does not end the bidding yet, because the players after them may still Challenge; that is the next step, below. In this round, two duty rules make sure the hand gets played:

• The trump-stop duty. You may not pass while holding a trump stop. A trump stop is the Skus; or the XXI with at least one other Tarok; or the XX with at least two others; or the XIX with at least three others, and so on, one more Tarok for each step down the ladder. If you hold one, you say “Dapp!”.
• The second-to-last duty. If everyone before you has passed and you are the second-to-last player to speak, the Dapp is yours automatically, whatever your cards. The final speaker is never drafted.

A duty-drafted Dapper cannot be Challenged. The dealer can be drafted like anyone else. Timid tables do not exist in Dappen; they get drafted.

The Challenge. After a voluntary Dapp bid, each player who speaks after the bidder, in counter-clockwise order, may call “Challenge!” once. The original bidder chooses: “Go ahead” hands the Dapp to the challenger, “I’ll keep it” holds it. Either way, the first Challenge ends the bidding on the spot: there are no second Challenges, not even after “Go ahead”. A live Challenge doubles the hand’s tier payout (the Dapp column, times two; the only exception is the 0-2 jackpot tier, which caps at 18 instead of 20). The Ultimos keep their own values; they are never doubled.

These are the base contracts, all you need for a full evening. When your table wants more, the Expansions add to them.

Should you claim it?

Look at the small hand you were dealt, knowing the Dapp may soon swell it: this section helps you decide whether to take on the whole table at once.

Count twice here: a rough read before you claim, the real count once the exchange shows twelve more cards.

Call “Solo!” if you hold: three or more commanding big Taroks (XV and up) already, strong enough to play the hand exactly as dealt against the whole table.

(Fine print: a Solo forgoes the exchange, so it needs a hand that not only owes the table a game on the trump-stop ladder but can win with no rebuild at all. Three or more of the top Taroks, XV and up, is the practical bar: enough uncatchable trump to carry the play alone. The Black Forest rules fix the duty ladder but print no hand counts, so treat the three as our own rule of thumb.)

Claim the Dapp if you hold: enough Taroks worth rebuilding around, aiming to hollow out a suit or two and land on about 3 commanding Taroks plus fat discards once the new cards settle. Your discards still count toward your pile.

(Fine print: the duty ladder already marks the floor. A hand that owes the table a game, a trump stop (the Skus, or the XXI with one more Tarok, the XX with two, the XIX with three, and on down), is exactly the hand worth claiming voluntarily, because the twelve-card exchange rebuilds everything around it. Below that floor, pass. The target of about three commanding Taroks after the exchange is our own rule of thumb; the Black Forest rules fix the ladder but print no hand counts.)

The King insight: in Dappen, do not count a lone King as a trick. With five or six opponents, somebody is almost always out of its suit the first time it is led, and the King gets trumped. Count your top Taroks only.

The Exchange

The Dapper takes all twelve Dapp cards into their hand. Count along: at a six-player table that makes 19 cards in hand, your dealt 7 plus the 12. Keep the best 7, and the other 12 go face-down in front of you as your discards. (With seven players the same move runs 6 plus 12 makes 18: keep 6, discard 12.) Either way you return to your dealt hand size. The discard laws are strict: the seven guardians may never be discarded: the three Trull cards and the four Kings. And the discards are not lost: they stay hidden in front of the Dapper and count toward the Dapper’s own pile at the end, pips and all.

The instant win. If, after the exchange, the Dapper holds all seven guardians (the full Trull and all four Kings), they reveal the hand and win on the spot at the top of the table: 10 Victory Points, 18 if a Challenge was live. No tricks are needed; the table applauds and shuffles.

The Ultimos

After the exchange and before the first trick, the Dapper may lay one or more of the Taroks I, II or III face-up on the table and promise a finale:

Ultimo	The promise	Success	Failure
III Ultimo	the III wins the third-to-last trick	Dapper +2	each opponent +2
II Ultimo	the II wins the second-to-last trick	Dapper +4	each opponent +4
Pagat Ultimo	the Pagat wins the very last trick	Dapper +6	each opponent +6

Each Ultimo is scored on its own, on top of the hand’s result. A declared Ultimo card stays visible and may not be played before its promised trick unless no legal card remains. (At a Black Forest table you will hear these promises called simply “Ultis”; they are the same feats in local dialect. Calling the King players will recognize the whole family in a warmer coat.)

Playing the Hand

The Dapper leads the first trick; afterwards the winner of each trick leads, counter-clockwise. The usual rules: follow the led suit, play a Tarok when void, anything if you have neither. Nobody is ever forced to beat the trick in Dappen. The opponents gather their tricks into one shared team pile.

Scoring the Hand

The Dapper counts their pile (tricks, discards and, after a Solo, the untouched Dapp). The team counts theirs. One old exception guards the door: if the Dapper wins no trick at all, the Dapp goes to the team instead, and the Dapper counts zero. Three easy steps:

1. Step one: count your captured cards.
2. Step two: divide by two and round down. That is your base count. (An odd lonely card adds nothing here; its pips still count in step three.)
3. Step three: add the pips. That is your pip count, and together the two counts are your Card Points.

The threshold: the team wins at 40 Card Points. At 39 or fewer, the Dapper has won the hand.

Then the sliding table pays out, always read from the loser’s Card Points, and always Simplified style: the winners add, nobody subtracts.

Loser’s CP	Dapp	Dapp + Challenge	Solo
33–39	1	2	3
28–32	2	4	5
23–27	3	6	7
18–22	4	8	9
13–17	5	10	11
8–12	6	12	13
3–7	7	14	15
0–2	10	18	20

The Dapper wins: the Dapper adds the tier value (read from the team’s Card Points). The team wins: each opponent adds the tier value (read from the Dapper’s Card Points). The worse the loser’s pile, the richer the winners.

A worked example, at the table. Six players, a plain Dapp. The team gathers 36 cards. Steps one and two: 36 cards ÷ 2 gives a base count of 18. Step three, the pip count: their pips add 20. Together 38 Card Points: two short of forty, so the Dapper has won, and 38 falls in the 33–39 tier. The Dapper adds 1 Victory Point, and their declared III Ultimo came home too: +2 more. That makes for a working evening at the table.

First to 60 Victory Points takes the crown. If several players cross 60 in the same hand, the highest total wins.

The contracts at a glance