French Tarot
The game of French Tarot is a trick-taking strategy tarot card game played by three to five players using a traditional 78-card tarot deck. The game is played in France and also in French-speaking Canada. It should not be confused with divinatory tarot, which refers to the use of tarot for cartomancy.
Background
France was one of the first two countries outside of Italy to start playing tarot, the other being Switzerland. While various types of tarot games were played in France since the 16th century, the dominant form now popular is the 19th-century rule set from Bourgogne-Franche-Comté. Historically, tarot games in France were played with the Italian-suited Tarot of Marseilles which had Renaissance allegorical images on the atouts while lacking reversible court cards and trumps and corner indices. For ease of play, the late 19th century French-suited "Tarot Nouveau" or "Bourgeois Tarot" supplanted the Marseilles Tarot with depictions of typical fin de siècle genre scenes of French life and leisure.In English, the game is referred to as French Tarot or sometimes as French tarot, however, the latter usually refers to tarot cards of French origin or to cartomantic tarot and not to the game. The name French Tarot is used in English to differentiate the card game from other uses of the tarot deck that are more familiar in the Americas and English-speaking countries, particularly the decks used for cartomancy and other divinatory purposes, and also to distinguish it from other card games played with a tarot deck. The unique feature that distinguishes French Tarot from other forms of tarot games is the overtrumping rule. In France it is just known as jeu de Tarot.
History
Cards appeared in Europe towards the end of the 14th century and may have been introduced first through Italy or Catalonia. Tarot cards are first mentioned in the mid-15th century in Italy. Initially called trionfi, meaning "triumph", whence the name "trump" in English, the Italians later called them tarocchi as the idea of trumps spread to other card games. Both the Italian word tarocchi and the French word tarot occur from the early 16th century onwards, although it is unclear whether one was derived from the other.Tarot was introduced into France in the early 16th century as a result of the First and Second Italian Wars and is widely recorded in French literature of that century, the earliest reference being that by Rabelais in Gargantua in 1534. By 1622 it had become more popular in France than chess and the earliest account appeared around 1637 in Nevers. This describes a three-player, 78-card game played with an Italian-suited pack with the Fool acting as an Excuse and the suits ranking in their 'original' order i.e. with numeral cards in the suits of Cups and Coins ranking from Ace to Ten. This ranking is retained in all Tarot games today except in France and Sicily. In France, Tarot remained in vogue until 1650, but then its popularity steadily waned to the point where, in 18th century France, it was barely played outside the Provence region.
The game experienced a revival in the course of the late 18th and 19th centuries. The original Italian-suited cards typified by the Tarot de Marseille came to be viewed as Italian and were replaced by French designs, notably the Tarot Nouveau.
There is some evidence that Napoleon's troops introduced Tarot, in the form of Droggn – a Tarot game with similarities to old French Tarot – into Austrian Tyrol. It is also recorded that French soldiers were issued with Tarot packs during the Franco-Prussian War, First World War and Algerian War, leading in each case to the spread of le jeu de Tarot throughout France according to Dummett and Berloquin. In 1973, the French Tarot Federation was formed and, by the late 20th century, Tarot had become the second-most popular card game in France, only trailing Belote. Part of the reason why French Tarot persisted is the fact that the rules have been very consistent wherever the game is played. However, it is important to note that details of play outside of officially sanctioned tournaments may vary from circle to circle so that the known rules and terminologies are more typical than definitive.
In the late 18th century in France, Tarot cards first became associated with fortune telling, a practice that eventually spread to much of the Western world. However, the cards preferred for divination are the older Italian-suited packs or bespoke modern designs, which have occultic symbology, rather than the packs with scenes of everyday life like the French Tarot Nouveau, German Cego and Austro-Hungarian Industrie und Glück packs.
Deck
The game is played using a 78-card tarot deck. This deck is composed of:- 21 numbered trump cards, and 1 unnumbered trump card: the "Excuse" or "Fool"
- * 3 of these trumps, known as oudlers, have particular importance: the 1 of trumps, the 21 of trumps and the "Excuse". These determine the contract the taker commits to in that particular game.
- 4 suits of 14 cards each:
- * numbered "pip cards" from 1 to 10 have no true value, except when taking its "fold" or add.5 point at counting,
- * four "face cards"; the Valet, Cavalier, Dame and Roi are respectively worth 2, 3, 4 and 5 points at end of match counting.
Rank of cards
The ranking of the hearts, clubs, diamonds and spades from the top is: King, Queen, Knight, Jack, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
''Excuse''
The only card with a special effect is the "Fool", L'Excuse. The Excuse may be played on any trick; it "excuses" the player from following suit. However, it normally doesn't win the trick. The card also normally 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 Excuse should instead give the winner of the trick a half-point card from the tricks the Excuse holder has already taken.Two common exceptions to the above procedure occur when the Excuse is played to the last trick, and what happens depends on whether the side playing the Fool has taken all the previous tricks. If the side has taken all previous tricks, the card takes the last trick; if not, it changes hands to the other side, even if the trick is won by a partner or fellow defender of the person playing it.
Rules
For 3 or 4 players. The 4-player variant is usually considered the most challenging and is the one played in competitions. The following rules are for 4 players.Dealing
Players draw for the first deal; the person with the lowest-value card deals first, with suits ordered spades > hearts > diamonds > clubs as a tiebreaker. All trumps rank higher than any suited card; anyone who draws the Fool must redraw. From this point, the deal will pass to the right for each subsequent deal.The player at the left of the dealer cuts the deck. The dealer then deals out the entire deck, anticlockwise, starting with first hand. Each player is dealt their cards in packets of three consecutive cards at a time. In addition, a chien of 6 cards is dealt one card at a time into the centre of the table, while dealing to the other players. A card may be dealt to the dog at any time, but the dealer may not:
- deal the dog two consecutive cards,
- deal the dog a card from the middle of a player's packet, or
- deal the first or last card of the deck to the dog.
A maldonne occurs when the dealer makes mistakes in the dealing; if this happens, the hand is redealt, either by the same dealer or the next in rotation. Players inspect, sort and evaluate their hands, and then move on to the bidding round.
Annulment
Before the bidding phase, if one player has a "Petit sec", then the player has to announce it and the hand is redealt. If it is discovered later in the game that a player had a "Petit sec", then it is also annulled and redealt by the following dealer.Bidding
The players look at the cards they have been dealt, and an auction begins, beginning with first hand and rotating counterclockwise. By bidding, a player states their confidence that they will be able to meet a set contract and sets the terms by which they will try to do so. If a player does not wish to bid, they may "pass" but may not bid after having passed previously. One may only bid higher than the previous bidders. The preneur is the one who wins this auction and who must subsequently try to achieve the contract while the other players are the defenders and attempt to prevent the taker from doing so.The level of bid is based on the strength of a player's hand, usually estimated by counting the points within it. See evaluating one's hand below for a method to determine the points within one's hand.
The bids are, in increasing importance:
- Prise or petite : if this is the winning bid the taker adds the "dog" to their hand, then confidentially sets aside a same number of cards of their choice, to bring their hand back to normal size before play begins. The discarded cards form the beginning of the taker's score pile. The name of this stack evolves from "le chien" to "l'écart".
- Pousse : same actions and scoring as a prise, but outranks the prise and generally indicates a stronger hand value. This bid is not in the official rules, and is a holdover from an older bidding system.
- Garde : the same actions as prise, but the taker wins or loses double the usual stake.
- Garde sans : 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 whomever wins the hand.
- Garde contre : 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 whomever wins the hand.
On a prise, pousse or garde, the taker may not set aside a king or a trump, except that if the player cannot discard anything else, they may discard a non-oudler trump. In this case, the taker has to display which trumps they set aside. An oudler may never be set aside.
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 and the pousse. 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.