Schnapsen
A twenty-card duel for the first to sixty-six card points. You must say when you have them, and saying it when you have not loses the deal, so the whole game is counting your opponent as carefully as yourself.
The cards
- Twenty cards: ace, ten, king, queen and jack in each suit. There are no nines and nothing below the jack.
- An ace is worth 11 card points, a ten 10, a king 4, a queen 3 and a jack 2. That is 120 in the pack.
- The ten beats the king. It is the second highest card in every suit, not the middle of the numbers.
- Five cards each. The next card is turned face up to set the trumps, and the rest of the pack goes face down on top of it, leaving ten to draw.
Playing a trick
- The non-dealer leads to the first trick. While the talon has cards, there is no obligation to follow suit and none to try to win.
- A trump beats a plain suit. Otherwise the higher card of the suit led wins, and a card of neither suit cannot win at all.
- The winner of each trick draws first, then the loser, so the face-up trump card goes to whoever loses the last drawing trick.
- Once nothing is left to draw, you must follow suit, and you must beat the card led if you can. With none of that suit you must trump if you hold one.
Declaring
- Holding the king and queen of a suit, you may show them when it is your turn to lead: 20 in a plain suit, 40 in trumps. You must then lead one of the two.
- A marriage scores nothing until you have taken a trick. Declare one and lose every trick and it was worth nothing at all.
- In Schnapsen a marriage may still be declared after the talon is closed or spent, which is not so in Sixty-Six.
- Holding the jack of trumps, you may swap it for the face-up trump card just before you lead, while cards remain and the talon is open.
- When it is your turn to lead you may close the talon by turning the trump card face down on it. Nothing more is drawn and the follow-suit rules begin at once.
How a game ends
- Reaching sixty-six card points wins the deal, but only if you say so: claim just after taking a trick or just after declaring a marriage.
- A claim that turns out to be wrong gives the deal to your opponent for 2 game points, or 3 if they had not taken a trick yet.
- A correct claim scores 1 game point if your opponent has 33 or more, 2 if they have fewer, and 3 if they have taken no trick at all.
- If the cards run out with nobody closing and nobody claiming, whoever takes the last trick wins the deal for exactly 1 game point, however the card points fell.
- Close and then fail to reach sixty-six and your opponent takes 2 game points, or 3 if they had no trick when you closed.
- Both players begin on 7 game points and subtract what they win. The first to reach zero or pass it wins the match.
- A resignation ends the game, and a missed move deadline is a loss, exactly like resigning.
These are the Austrian rules. Sixty-Six is the German parent of this game and differs in thirteen places, including the pack, which card exchanges for the trump, what the last trick is worth and which way the score runs. The two are separate games rather than two opinions about one, and mixing them gives a game no rule book describes.
Schnapsen terms
- The talon
- The face-down cards left to draw, with the trump card face up beneath them.
- A marriage
- The king and queen of one suit, shown when leading. Twenty in a plain suit, forty in trumps, and nothing until you take a trick.
- Closing
- Turning the trump card face down to stop the drawing. It commits you to reaching sixty-six, and costs you the deal if you do not.
- Claiming
- Saying you have sixty-six. The deal stops there and is scored. Saying it wrongly loses.
- Schneider
- Losing with fewer than 33 card points, which costs 2 game points instead of 1.
- Schwarz
- Losing without taking a single trick, which costs 3.