peer2peergames

Durak

One of you attacks with a card and the other beats it or picks it up. A card that is beaten is gone for good, and a card whose rank is already on the table can be thrown in after it. The trump beats anything but a higher trump. There is no winner in durak, only a loser: the player still holding cards when the talon is empty and the other has run out is the durak, which is Russian for fool.

Play Durak Leaderboard

The pack and the deal

  1. Two players, and a pack of thirty-six cards: ace, king, queen, jack, ten, nine, eight, seven and six in each suit. The ace is high and the six is low.
  2. Six cards each. The next card is turned face up and its suit is trumps for the whole deal.
  3. That turned up card stays in the game: it lies under the rest of the pack, which is the talon, and it is the last card anybody draws.
  4. Whoever holds the lowest trump attacks first. You are not told which card that is, only who opens.

Attack and defence

  1. The attacker plays a card face up. The defender has to beat it or pick it up.
  2. A card is beaten by a higher card of the same suit, or by any trump. A trump is beaten only by a higher trump.
  3. There is no following suit: you may trump a card even when you hold the suit it was played in.
  4. If you cannot beat it, or would rather not, you pick up every card in the bout, beaten and unbeaten, and they go into your hand.

Throwing in

  1. Once the defender has beaten a card, the attacker may throw in another, and it has to match the rank of a card already on the table.
  2. That includes the cards the defender has played. If a six is beaten by a ten, a second six and a second ten may both be thrown in.
  3. The attack may never be larger than six cards, and never larger than the number of cards the defender held when the bout began.
  4. When the defender picks the bout up, the attacker may throw in more cards first, up to the same limit, and those go into the defender's hand as well.

Ending a bout

  1. If the defender beats everything and the attacker stops, the whole bout goes face down on the heap and is out of the game. The defender attacks next.
  2. If the defender picks the bout up, they do not get a turn to attack: the same player attacks again.
  3. You cannot look through the heap, here as at a table. The number of cards in it is shown and nothing more.

Drawing from the talon

  1. After each bout both players draw back up to six cards, the attacker first and the defender second, for as long as the talon lasts.
  2. When the talon holds one card it goes to the player who attacked, and the other draws nothing.
  3. The face up trump is the last card of the talon, so the player who draws it is the one who empties it.

The trump six

  1. Whoever is dealt the trump six, or draws it from the talon, may exchange it for the face up trump while that card is still there.
  2. It is offered on your own turn. At a table the exchange can be made at any moment; here every position waits on one player, so it waits for yours.
  3. A trump six you picked up from your opponent is not yours to exchange.

How it ends

  1. Once the talon is empty, a player with no cards left is out of the deal, and the deal ends at the end of a bout.
  2. The player still holding cards is the durak. There is no winner in the game itself; on this site the other player is credited with the win.
  3. If the last bout empties both hands at once, the deal is a draw and nobody is the fool.
  4. A resignation or a missed deadline ends the game against that player, who is the durak. Every move has the same deadline, chosen when the table is made.

Worth knowing before you start

  1. Shedding is the whole game. A card thrown into a bout that is beaten off is a card gone for ever, so throwing in is usually right and holding your good cards back is usually wrong.
  2. Picking a bout up is not free: every card in it joins your hand, and the cards you have to get rid of at the end are the ones that make you the fool.
  3. Trumps win the endgame. Spending a high trump early to save picking up two cards is often a bad trade while the talon is deep.
  4. The word durak means fool, and it is the game's own name for whoever is left holding cards. Nobody here is called one by the site.
  5. Both hands' card counts are on the table all the way through, so nothing has to be announced and nobody can be caught out for forgetting.

The deal and every draw come from the seed, which is published when the game ends, so the whole deal can be checked afterwards. Neither player ever sees the other's hand or the order of the talon. This is Podkidnoy Durak, the throwing-in game, which is the form most of its players know; the transferring form, Perevodnoy, is a different game and is not played here.

Durak terms

The talon
The face-down cards left after the deal, with the turned up trump underneath them. Both players draw from it after every bout until it is empty.
A bout
One attack and its defence: the cards attacked with, the cards that beat them, and whatever else is thrown in before it ends.
To throw in
To add a card to an attack already under way. Its rank has to be on the table already, in either player's cards.
The heap
Where a beaten bout goes, face down and out of the game. You cannot look through it.
The durak
The player left holding cards when the talon is empty and the other has run out. It is Russian for fool.

Playing it here

  • Against a person or the bot. The bot needs no account and starts at once. To play a person, be rated and keep your games, you need an account: an email address and a password.
  • At your own pace. Every move has a deadline you both see, from one minute to a week. A game can take an evening or it can take a fortnight.
  • Nothing to buy and nothing to win. No stakes, no prizes, no boosts, no undo. The only thing on offer is a place on a leaderboard, and only if you want one.
  • Every game can be checked. Anything decided by chance comes from the game's seed, and the seed is published the moment the game ends, so any finished game can be replayed and verified by anyone. See fair play.