Tarot (game)

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This article is about the French Tarot card game. For the use of Tarot cards in divination, see Tarot reading. For the history of the cards themselves see Tarot. For other uses, see tarot (disambiguation).

Tarot is a trick-taking card game played throughout France and also known in French-speaking Canada, which uses a traditional 78-card Tarot deck instead of the standard poker deck. The Fédération Française de Tarot publishes official rules for Tarot. The game is sometimes referred to in English as French tarot; for example, the French name of the annual Montreal festival Festival International de Tarot de Montréal is officially translated into English as International French Tarot Festival of Montreal.

A 15 card tarot deal for the 5 player variant

1 The deck
2 Rules
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] The deck

The game of Tarot is played using a 78-card deck, divided into a numbered 21-card series of atouts (trump cards), one Fool (l'excuse), and 4 suits (spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs), divided into 10 numbers from 1 to 10, and then the face cards of jack (valet), knight (cavalier), queen (dame) and king (roi). Three cards known as oudlers or bouts are of particular importance: the excuse (the Fool), the 1 of trumps (the petit or little one) , and the 21 of trumps.

The ranking of the suit cards in both the red and black suits is from highest to lowest:

king, queen, knight, jack, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

[edit] Rules

For 3 or 4 players (5 with a simple variation). The 4-player variant is usually considered the most challenging and is the one played in competitions.

[edit] Setup

The player at the left of the dealer (chosen by draw, with the person with the smallest card becoming the dealer) cuts the deck. The dealer then deals out the entire deck; dealing equal hands to each of the players, plus six cards to the "dog" (chien in French, also commonly translated as "kitty"), a face-down pile in the middle of the table. Each player is dealt his cards three at a time, and the dog is dealt one card at a time at any time the dealer wishes except for the first and last card dealt, which may not be part of the dog.

Players inspect and evaluate their hands and move on to the bidding round.

[edit] Bidding

The players look at the cards they have been dealt, and a round of bidding begins, starting from the player to the right of the dealer. One may only bid higher than the previous bidders. The preneur or taker is the one who wins this auction.

The bids are, in increasing importance:

prise (take) or petite (small): if this is the winning bid the taker adds the dog to his hand, then discards six cards of his choice to bring his hand back to normal size before play begins. The discarded cards form the beginning of the taker's score pile.
garde (guard): the same as prise, but the taker wins or loses double the usual stake.
garde sans [le chien] (guard without [the dog]): the dog goes directly into the taker's score pile, and no-one gets to see it until the end of the hand. The score is counted normally against the target number, but it is worth double the garde score to whoever wins the hand.
garde contre [le chien] (guard against [the dog]): the dog goes directly into the opposing score pile, without being shown until the end of the hand. The score is counted normally against the target number, but it is worth triple the garde score to whoever wins the hand.

In earlier rules, still played outside of competitions, in place of the prise and simple garde, there were two bids, in increasing importance: the petite (small) and the pousse (push). The prise is still sometimes known as petite. There are also some players who play without the prise contract, with garde as the minimum allowable bid.

[edit] Main phase

The player to the right of the taker leads the first trick, and the play proceeds counter-clockwise, with every player adding a card from his hand to the trick. Every subsequent trick is led by the player who took the last trick. (The leader of a trick must play a pip or face card, unless he doesn't have any, at which point he must play a trump.)

Once the leader of a trick has played a card, everyone else must follow suit (play a card of that same suit, if they have one). If a player cannot follow suit, he must play a trump card, which beats everything except higher-valued trump (The "petit" is valued lowest, and the "21" is valued highest). If he has no pip or face card matching suit and no trump, he may play any card to the trick. If the trick is led with a trump, all other players must play a trump card and if possible play a trump exceeding the rank of all trump previously played in the trick, or play any card if he cannot.

[edit] The Fool (Excuse)

The only card with a special effect is the Fool, called the ‘excuse’. The Fool may be played on any trick: it "excuses" the player from following suit. However it never wins the trick. The Fool remains the property of the person who played it, not the winner of that trick: to compensate for this in the scoring count, the owner of the Fool should instead give the winner of the trick a half-point card from his pile of previously won tricks. When the last trick has been played, the game ends.

L'Excuse or "fool"

[edit] Scoring

[edit] Value of the cards

Kings and oudlers are worth 4½ points;
Queens are worth 3½;
Knights are worth 2½;
Jacks are worth 1½;
All other cards are worth ½ point.

[edit] Winning

The number of points the taker needs depends on how many of the oudlers (excuse, petit, 21 of trumps) are among his won tricks.

The three oudlers

With 3 oudlers the taker needs at least 36 card points to win;
With 2 oudlers the taker needs at least 41 card points to win;
With 1 oudler the taker needs at least 51 card points to win;
With none the taker needs at least 56 card points to win.

If the taker beats his target score, he scores 25 points plus 1 for each point scored in excess of the target; otherwise, all of the other players gain 25 points plus the deficit. All of these scores are multiplied by the appropriate multiplier (1, 2, 4 or 6) for the bid. The two score piles are stacked (there is no shuffling in Tarot except for the ‘soft shuffling’ that occurs during play) and the player to the right of the last dealer deals the next hand.

[edit] Five-player variant

The dog consists of three cards. After calling the dog and scoring his three cards, the taker calls the King of any suit. Whoever has that King becomes the taker's partner, and plays with him against the other players. (Compare the Austrian version, Königrufen, in which this King-calling mechanism is used so that four-player play is two against two.) If the taker has all four kings, he calls a queen. If the taker has all four kings and all four queens, he calls a knight. The taker must play alone if he has all kings, queens and knights. In some variants, the King is called before calling the dog, so the taker may accidentally call himself.