Hungarian Tarokk (Paskievics tarokk) · how the round of announcements is spoken
The Hungarian Tarokk rules teach the machine of the round of announcements. It begins with the Declarer and circles counter-clockwise, and at each turn a player may announce bonuses for their side, declare eight or nine Taroks, kontra the other side’s contract or announcements, or pass. It closes when three players in a row have only passed. The main rules also teach the one convention that holds the whole thing together: an announcer is assumed to be on the same side as the last player who announced or kontra’d anything, unless they attach a kontra of their own.
This page is the etiquette around that machine: the order the words come in, how a table reads who belongs to whom, what a silence is worth, and the manners that keep a secret partnership secret while four people speak openly about it.
The order of speech
In the base rules the Declarer calls the XX right after the discards, and only then does the round of announcements begin. The Declarer opens it. If the Declarer holds eight or nine Taroks and wants to declare them, that comes first, ahead of any bonus. Then come the bonuses, in whatever order you like, and every turn ends with the word “pass” (passz, or mehet) to hand the floor on.
Traditional groups put the call into the same turn. The Declarer begins with the Taroks, then names the called card and the bonuses, and ends with “pass”, for example: “Nine Taroks; I call the XX; Pagat Ultimo; XXI-catch; pass.”
After that the round travels counter-clockwise. At your turn you may declare, announce, kontra, or say nothing but “pass”, and then the next player speaks. The round ends only after three players in a row have said nothing but “pass”, however often it goes round.
Two small manners carry a lot of weight. Decide everything before you open your mouth, and say it in one breath, without pausing between the items: a pause invites the table to read your thinking, and reading your thinking is exactly what your opponents are trying to do. And name your target when you double. “Kontra” alone is not a call; “Kontra the Trull” is.
How players read the sides
The sides are secret, yet every announcement must belong to one of them, or nobody could tell whom a kontra is aimed at. Hungarian groups settle this with three rules.
- An announcer whose side cannot be proved otherwise counts as a teammate of the last player who made an announcement or a kontra. When nothing has been said yet, the announcer counts as being on the Declarer‘s side.
- An announcer who is in fact against that player must, in the same turn, also say kontra or rekontra to something the other side has said. That kontra shows which side they are on.
- A player whose side is already known may announce without adding a kontra. The side is known when the bidding showed it, when an earlier announcement of that player proved it, or when one of their kontras placed them.
Because of the third rule, the round of announcements needs none of this signalling after a yield, or after the Declarer had to call an invited card. In both cases the bidding has already made the partnership public. The invitation system has its own page.
What silence means
A pass costs nothing and promises nothing. It is the honest answer of a player with no feat to sell, and most passes are exactly that.
But silence in a particular place speaks. Suppose the Declarer calls the XX, the next player says “Kontra the Three“, the third passes, and the fourth then announces “Trull“. By rule 1 that fourth player is taken to be on the side of the kontra, which is to say against the Declarer. They did not rekontra anything, so they have not corrected that reading. The table has just learned that this player does not hold the XX. Unless the Declarer is playing alone, the third player, the one who said nothing at all, is the Declarer’s secret Partner. A pass gave the partnership away without a word being spoken.
The same thing happens in reverse. When an experienced side expects an announcement and it does not arrive, the gap is information: a Declarer who cannot support the Partner’s Trull is telling the Partner something about the honours, and everybody at the table hears it.
Declaring your Taroks
If you hold exactly eight or nine Taroks after the discard, you may declare it at your turn: “Eight Taroks” (nyolc tarokk) or “Nine Taroks” (kilenc tarokk). Any player may do it. In Simplified Scoring you alone add 1 Victory Point for eight Taroks, or 2 Victory Points for nine, the moment you declare them, whatever happens later. In Traditional Scoring each of the other three players pays you 1 Victory Point for eight Taroks, or 2 Victory Points for nine, your own Partner included.
The etiquette matters here. A declaration of Taroks sits outside the side-reading convention. Nobody may kontra it, and it leaves the sides as they were: the next player who announces is still taken to be on the side of the last player who announced or kontra’d anything, and the side of the player who declares stays open. It does count as speech, though, so it is not a pass, and the round goes on. One duty comes with it: a player who announces Pagat Ultimo, or kontras one, must declare eight or nine Taroks if they hold that many. Some circles treat declarations like announcements for reading sides, so ask before you assume.
The manners that make it work
- Speak only at your turn, and clearly. The Declarer opens, and nobody speaks over the circle.
- Never reveal a partnership with a look. The call, the announcements and the play are the only proper ways for the truth to come out.
- Answer the levels in order. A kontra doubles an item, a rekontra from the side that owns the item answers the kontra, and a subkontra from the doubting side answers the rekontra. Jumping straight to subkontra is not a legal call.
- You may announce for your partner. If you believe your Partner holds the Pagat, you may announce Pagat Ultimo and commit them to it. That is a normal move, not a rudeness.
- An announced Pagat Ultimo binds its holder. The Pagat stays in the hand as long as the Color Rule and the Tarok Rule allow. If they force it out before the last trick, the Ultimo has failed.
- Two restrictions on the big multipliers, at many tables. You may not announce the double game and the Valat at the same turn, and you may not announce the double game at all once your side has announced the Valat. The main rules do not set these limits; agree on them before the first deal.
- The forced kontra is not an insult. If the called Tarok turns out to lie in someone’s discards, the Declarer plays alone, and the player who discarded it must double the contract with a kontra. The table understands it as bookkeeping rather than as an opinion.
- Table talk is allowed, information is not. Hungarian Tarokk has a whole comic vocabulary: humorous names for a Solo bid, mock groans over the XXI, sayings for every superstition. The rule that governs all of it is simple: a remark must never tell another player something they could not otherwise know. Saying “I need it, I take it” as you play the Skus is fine, because everyone can see the Skus cannot be beaten. Saying it over a lower Tarok is a serious breach, because not every player has counted the Taroks.
- Give a thinking player room. The traditional encouragement for someone taking too long is “no problem, it is only a game”, and it is said kindly.
The Hungarian Tarokk puzzles practise the announcement etiquette, the side-reading convention included.
Back to the rules: the Hungarian Tarokk rules, “Bonuses and Announcements” and its part “Declaring your Taroks”. The coded bidding that happens one phase earlier is on the invitation system page.
Sources
- pagat.com, Hungarian Tarokk, “Procedure for the round of announcements”: the order within a turn, the closing rule of three successive passes, the three side-reading rules, the exception for declarations of tarokks, the restrictions on double game and volát, and the worked examples of announcement rounds. pagat.com
- pagat.com, Hungarian Tarokk, “Declaring tarokks” (payment of 1 from each player for eight tarokks, 2 for nine) and “Kontra” (kontra, rekontra, szubkontra, hirskontra, mordkontra, each naming its target). pagat.com
- pagat.com, Hungarian Tarokk Example Deal 13, “A few tarokk customs and sayings”, contributed by Révész Gábor: the warning that sayings must not convey information, the “I need it, I take it” case, and the encouragement for a slow thinker. pagat.com