Glossary

Terms from the world of traditional card games. What they mean, where they come from.

1: The 1 is the highest number card of the red suits: it beats the 2, the 3 and the 4.
1 vs 3: One player plays alone against the other three.
2 vs 2: Two players team up against the other two.
Alps, the: The Alps are a mountain range that runs through Austria, Slovenia, northern Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, southern Germany and southeastern France. When this book says alpine, it means these mountains and their valleys. The games in this book grew up in and around the Alps.
Announcement: An announcement is a bonus that a player declares aloud before the first trick. An announced bonus is worth double, and in most games an announced bonus that fails scores for the other side. Most announcements are your choice; Calling the Twenty’s held Trull is an exception that must be declared. See also: Bonus, Kontra.
Base count: The base count is the part of your Card Points that comes from the number of cards you captured. The base count differs from game to game: one for each card, the number of cards divided by three, or the number of cards divided by two. Add your pip count and you have your Card Points.
Beggar: In a Beggar contract the Declarer plays alone against the other players and must win no trick at all, and the Rising Rule is on (Bettler in German, berač in Slovenian, koldus in Hungarian). Calling the King and Slovenian Tarok have a Beggar; the other four games have none.
Bidding: The bidding opens every hand: the players bid in turn for the contract, and each new bid must normally be higher than the last; standing is the exception (see Standing).
Birds, the: The Birds are the four lowest Taroks: the Pagat (I, the sparrow), the II (cuckoo), the III (magpie) and the IV (raven). Several games attach feats to exactly these cards: the Ultimos.
Bonus: A bonus is an extra feat that scores Victory Points on top of the contract. Bonuses are scored regardless of who won the contract. Almost every bonus scores two ways: silently for the small value, or announced beforehand for double. In most games an announced bonus that fails scores for the other side. Bonuses come in two families: hand bonuses reward the cards dealt to you (for example all three Trull cards in one hand), and table bonuses are earned in play (like the Ultimos). See also: Announcement.
Buttering the trick: Buttering the trick means playing a card with many pips, such as a King or a Queen, into a trick that your own side has already won, so that those pips go into your side’s pile. It is not a mistake. It is also a way for secret Partners to show each other that they are on the same side.
Called-partner contract: In a called-partner contract, the Declarer finds a secret Partner by calling a card out loud. In Calling the Twenty and Hungarian Tarokk the called card is the Tarok XX; in Calling the King and Slovenian Tarok it is a King.
Calling the King (Königrufen): Calling the King is a four-player game from Austria. It has positive, negative and no-trump contracts, and in the Call the Declarer finds a secret Partner by calling a King.
Calling the Twenty (Zwanzigerrufen): Calling the Twenty is the starter game of this book. Four players play it without a talon, and in the Call the Forehand finds a secret Partner by calling the XX.
Card Points: Card Points are what the captured cards are worth, and they are counted at the end of the hand: your base count (which differs from game to game) plus your pip count (which is counted the same way in every game). Card Points decide who won the hand. See also: Base count, Pip count.
Cavalier: The Cavalier is the fourth face card, ranking between Queen and Jack. You recognize it by the horse and the letter C in its index; it is also called the Knight or the Rider.
Color Rule: The Color Rule says that you must follow suit: if you hold a card of the led suit, you must play one.
Color suits: The color suits are the four familiar ones: Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs and Spades.
Contract: The contract is what the bidding decides: the goal of the hand, who plays with whom, and how many Victory Points it is worth.
Cutter: The Cutter is the player who cuts the deck after the shuffle.
Dappen: Dappen is a game from the Black Forest for six to eight players, the largest group of the six games. One player plays alone against all the other players, who play together as one team.
Deal direction: The deal direction differs from game to game. Most games in this book deal and play to the right (counter-clockwise); Calling the Twenty deals and plays to the left (clockwise). Each chapter states its direction, and the bidding and the play go the same way as the deal.
Dealer: The Dealer shuffles and deals the hand; the role moves on after every hand.
Declarer: The Declarer is the player who wins the bidding and plays the contract.
Declarer Challenge: The Declarer Challenge is the one positive contract of Strawman: the player who says “I’ll play” becomes the Declarer and must capture at least 36 of the 70 Card Points. If the Declarer wins, they add 2 Victory Points; if the Declarer falls short, the opponent adds 3 Victory Points.
Defenders: The Defenders are everyone playing against the Declarer’s side.
Distance: The distance is the second step of scoring in Slovenian Tarok. Round the Card Points between the result of the Declarer’s side and 35 Card Points to the nearest five, and score one Victory Point for every five Card Points; the distance is plus if the contract was won and minus if it was lost.
Dodge Round: In a Dodge Round each player plays alone and tries to capture as few Card Points as possible, and the Rising Rule is on. In Calling the Twenty, Calling the King and Slovenian Tarok the Forehand may choose it when the other three players have passed, and in Strawman it is played when both players pass. In Calling the Twenty and Calling the King the player with the most Card Points loses; in Strawman the player with fewer Card Points wins 2 Victory Points; Slovenian Tarok scores its Dodge Round in its own way.
Edelweiss: The Edelweiss is a white flower of the Alps, and in this deck it is the face of the Skus.
Empty four: The empty four are the 1♥, 1♦, 10♣ and 10♠ in Calling the Twenty: the only captured cards that bring no Card Points at all.
Fairy Tale Trick: The Fairy Tale Trick happens when the Skus, the Moon and the Pagat all fall in the same trick: the Pagat wins it. It is also called the Emperor’s Trick. Some games in this book play without the Fairy Tale Trick, and each of them says so in its chapter.
Forehand: The Forehand sits next to the Dealer in the direction of play; in Strawman, the two-player game, the Forehand is the player who does not deal. In most games the Forehand bids first (in Slovenian Tarok the Forehand waits and bids last). Several games give the Forehand special rights or duties, and each chapter explains its own.
Hand: A hand is one deal, played out and scored: the Dealer deals the cards, the players bid for a contract, the tricks are played, and the Victory Points are scored. An evening is a series of hands.
Honours: The honours are Hungarian Tarokk’s name for the Skus, the XXI and the Pagat: a player who holds none of them may not bid (the fourth player’s trial Three, after three passes, is the one exception). The same three cards form the Trull.
Hungarian Tarokk (Paskievics tarokk): Hungarian Tarokk is a four-player game with few contracts and big bonuses.
King Ultimo: King Ultimo is the promise that the called King is played to the very last trick and the Declarer’s side takes that trick (König Ultimo in German, kralj ultimo in Slovenian). The King itself does not have to win the trick: a Tarok of the Declarer’s side may win it.
King-rescue: The king-rescue is a rule of Slovenian Tarok for a called King that turns out to be in the talon: the Declarer may take the talon group that holds it, and the talon cards that the Declarer did not take are then set aside face-down instead of going to the pile of the Defenders. When the Declarer plays that King later, these cards go face-up onto the trick, and the player who wins the trick takes them.
Kontra: A Kontra doubles the stakes of a contract the Defenders believe will fail. The other side may answer with Rekontra and double again.
Lead, to: To lead means to play the first card of a trick. That card’s suit becomes the led suit, and it sets the rules for everyone who follows.
Moon (XXI): The Moon is the highest numbered Tarok, marked with a small moon and carried by the Brown Bear. The name comes from a confusion of words: the French le monde, the world, was taken for the German Mond, the moon. It belongs to the Trull.
Negative contract: A negative contract is won by winning no tricks, or a fixed small number of tricks. The Rising Rule switches on whenever one is played.
No-trump contract: In a no-trump contract the Taroks lose their trump power and play as an ordinary fifth suit: nothing trumps anything, and the highest card of the led suit takes every trick. The no-trump contracts in this book are No-Trump (Calling the Twenty), No-Trump and No-Trump Solo (Calling the King), and No-Trump Valat (Slovenian Tarok).
Pagat (I): The Pagat is the lowest Tarok, carried by the Sparrow. It carries 4 star pips, it is the card of the Pagat Ultimo, and it wins the Fairy Tale Trick.
Pagat Ultimo: Pagat Ultimo is the promise to win the very last trick with the Pagat itself.
Partner: The Partner is the player who plays on the Declarer’s side. In a called-partner contract this is the player who holds the called card. The Partner may not tell anyone. The others find out from the play, for example when the Partner butters the Declarer’s trick, and at the latest when the called card is played.
Pip count: The pip count is the sum of the pips in a pile of captured cards, and it is the same in every game. Add it to your base count and you have your Card Points.
Pips: Pips are the small printed symbols on the cards: suit pips (with rank-direction arrows) and the side pips that add up to a pile’s pip count.
Positive contract: A positive contract is won by capturing Card Points.
Rising Rule: The Rising Rule applies in the negative contracts and in every Dodge Round: if you can beat the highest card on the table, you must (Stichzwang in German, nadigravanje in Slovenian, felülütési kényszer in Hungarian).
Round: A round is a unit that contains hands, or one turn for each player in the group. A bidding round gives each player one turn to bid. What else counts as a round belongs to each game’s chapter: see Round of deals and Skus round (Skus round).
Round of deals: In Hungarian Tarokk the session runs in rounds of four deals, one per Dealer. When all four players pass, the cards are thrown in and the deal passes to the right, as “The Bidding” in the Hungarian Tarokk chapter explains (The Bidding).
Scribe: The scribe keeps score for the whole group: one player, one score sheet, one column per player.
Simplified Scoring: Simplified Scoring is this book’s system: there are no debts, and no player pays another. In five of the six games the winners add the contract’s Victory Points to their totals, the losers add nothing, and the totals only go up. Slovenian Tarok is the exception: there the Declarer’s side scores a minus when it loses the contract.
Skus: The Skus (Sküs in German, škis in Slovenian, Skíz in Hungarian) is the most powerful card in the deck, with a star at its index and the Edelweiss on its face. It beats every other card, except in the Fairy Tale Trick. It belongs to the Trull.
Skus round: The Skus round is the way an evening of Slovenian Tarok ends. It begins with the next deal after a player reaches 200 Victory Points: the players note who was dealt the Skus in that hand, and when the deal next comes around to that player, their deal is the last hand.
Slovenian Tarok (slovenski tarok): Slovenian Tarok is a game from Slovenia for three or four players. In its scoring, the Declarer’s side adds Victory Points when it wins the contract and subtracts Victory Points when it loses it.
Solo: In a Solo one player plays against all the others, without a Partner, for more Victory Points. Most games in this book have one, under names from plain Solo to Grand Solo, and each chapter lists its own. In Hungarian Tarokk the Solo is different: the Declarer takes no talon card and still calls a Tarok.
Standing: Standing is a bidding right: a player says “I hold” and takes the last bid for themselves instead of naming a higher contract, and the player who made that bid must bid higher or pass. The call is “I hold” (Ich halte! in German, obdržim in Slovenian, tartom in Hungarian). In Slovenian Tarok an earlier seat (closer to the Forehand) may hold a later seat’s bid. In Hungarian Tarokk you may hold only after you have already bid in that hand, and each bid may be held only once.
Strawman (Strohmandeln): Strawman is the two-player game of this book. Each player has three piles of cards on the table, the Strawmen, and may play the face-up top card of each pile as if it were in the hand.
Talon: The talon is a set of cards that some games place face-down in the middle of the table, in one packet or several. Depending on the game and the contract, the Declarer takes cards from it, it goes to the Defenders, or its cards are added to tricks.
Tarok declaration (nyolc tarokk / kilenc tarokk): In Hungarian Tarokk, a player holding exactly eight or nine Taroks after the discard may declare the fact during the announcement round and scores for it however the hand ends. Nobody may kontra the declaration. Anyone who announces Pagat Ultimo, or kontras one, must declare eight or nine Taroks if held.
Tarok Rule: The Tarok Rule applies when you are void in the led suit: you must play a Tarok. Your Tarok does not have to win the trick, but you may not play a color card in its place.
Tarok suit: The Tarok suit holds the 22 Taroks, the trumps of the deck: the I through the XXI plus the Skus. Each numbered Tarok shows an animal of the Alps.
Traditional Scoring: Traditional Scoring is the zero-sum settlement: the losers pay the winners, and a player who plays alone collects from every opponent or pays every opponent. In four of the six games it uses the same contracts and values as Simplified Scoring; Slovenian Tarok and Dappen have native values of their own. This book describes it in “Expansions” and in the “Traditional Scoring Tables” at the back.
Trick: A trick is one turn for each player: each player plays one card, the winning card takes them all, and the player who won the trick leads the next one.
Trull, the: The Trull unites the Skus, the Moon (XXI) and the Pagat (I): three Taroks that each carry 4 star pips. Capturing all three in your side’s tricks is a bonus in several games of this book. Calling the Twenty is an exception, where the bonus is for holding all three in one hand and must be declared. Dappen is another: it has no bonus for holding or capturing all three.
Ultimo: An Ultimo is a promise tied to a specific card and a specific trick, always named card-first: Pagat Ultimo (the last trick), II Ultimo (second-to-last), III Ultimo (third-to-last), King Ultimo. The numbered Taroks must win their trick themselves; the called King only has to be played to the last trick, and its side has to take it. Some of them have nicknames in German (Uhu for the II Ultimo, Kakadu for the III Ultimo, and Marabu or Quapil for the IV Ultimo, depending on the group).
Valat: A Valat means winning every single trick of a hand.
Victory Points (VP): Victory Points go on the score sheet: every contract and every bonus has a value in its game’s table, and the players who earned it score that value in Victory Points. Victory Points decide who wins the evening.
Void: Being void means holding no cards of the led suit. When you are void, the Tarok Rule applies.