Flaschenteufel

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In the trick-taking card game Flaschenteufel (German for the Bottle Imp) players must follow the suit led, but if they are void in that suit they may play a card of another suit and this can still win the trick if its value is high enough. For this reason every card in the deck has a different number to prevent ties. A further strategic element is introduced since one suit contains mostly low cards and another, mostly high cards.

The game starts with an object placed at the center of the table to represent the bottle. A high-value card is also placed there as the starting value of the bottle. For each round, each player deals one card. If all cards are higher than the value of the bottle, the player who dealt the highest card takes all the cards and the next round commences. If, however, at least one card is lower than the value of the bottle, the player who dealt the highest card below the bottle's value takes all the cards plus the bottle. The card initially with the bottle gets replaced with the winning card, which now denotes the bottle's new value. Thus, as in the short story, the bottle's value decreases throughout the game until it can no longer be "sold" for a lower value. And as in the story, there is a price to pay for getting stuck with the bottle at the end: when all cards have been played, all players score the total number of points of their won cards, except for the player with the bottle who has the total value of his or her cards deducted from his or her score.

The element of the bottle determines much of the strategy in the game: since it is harder to get rid of the bottle at a lower value than at a higher one, players will generally try to get rid of their lowest cards early on in the game when there is a better chance that someone else will play a higher card that is still lower than the bottle's value.