A Game With History
The cards were first made in 15th-century Italy, where the games are still called tarocchi, and from there they spread across Europe and changed on the way. The Tarok games on this site grew up in and around the Alps: in Austria, Slovenia, Hungary, South Tyrol and the Black Forest. That is why Tarok is not one game but a whole family of games, such as Austrian Königrufen, Hungarian Tarokk and Slovenian Tarok. It is also why the deck is called Alpine Tarok: its cards show animals of the Alps and the Edelweiss, the star-shaped flower of the Alps.
These games are still played today. In 2024, Austria added Königrufen to its national UNESCO inventory of intangible cultural heritage. Slovenia holds a national championship, and Hungary holds national competitions.
Tarok cards and the Tarot cards used for fortune-telling have the same origin, but Tarok cards are for playing games.
What makes Tarok unique?
Tarok is a family of trick-taking games. In a trick, each player plays one card to the middle of the table, and the strongest card takes them all (Meet the Deck shows which card is stronger). The cards you capture count for your Card Points. Meet the Deck and Core Concepts explain the rest. Trick-taking is not what makes Tarok unique: the fifth suit, the bidding and the scoring are.
The fifth suit. You may already know part of the deck: four classic suits with Kings, Queens and Jacks. The fifth suit is new: the 22 Taroks. The Taroks are trumps, which means that a Tarok beats any card of the four color suits.
The bidding. Before the first card is played, the players bid for a contract. A contract is the goal that a player promises to reach in this hand. You do not bid on how good your cards are; you look for the contract that fits your cards. In some contracts you must capture more than half of the Card Points, and in others you must avoid winning tricks. There is a contract for nearly any hand you are dealt. You win a hand by delivering the contract you chose, not by capturing the most Card Points.
The surprising scoring. The highest-ranking cards are not always the most valuable: a King captured in a trick is worth more Card Points than most of the Taroks. So it matters which cards you capture, not only how many tricks you win.
Come Sit At The Table
This is your invitation to play. Meet the Deck shows you every card.
Games at a Glance
The six games to start with, in the order of the table below. Some are easy and some are demanding, some need two players and some eight. Start with Calling the Twenty, the game a new Alpine Tarok deck comes presorted for, and once you know it, wander on: every game in this family teaches you something new.
| Game | Players | Difficulty | Its specialty | Rules |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Calling the Twenty (Zwanzigerrufen) | 4 | ●○○ | ★ Start here: the starter game | Calling the Twenty |
| Calling the King (Königrufen) | 4 | ●●● | Every kind of contract in a single game | Calling the King |
| Slovenian Tarok (slovenski tarok) | 3–4 | ●●● | The most contracts, and a heavy penalty for losing the Moon. | Slovenian Tarok |
| Hungarian Tarokk (Paskievics tarokk) | 4 | ●●● | Few contracts, big bonuses. | Hungarian Tarokk |
| Strawman (Strohmandeln) | 2 | ●○○ | Your hand extends to three piles on the table, their top cards face-up for both players to see. | Strawman |
| Dappen | 6–8 | ●●○ | One player plays against all the others. | Dappen |