Point Tarock


Point Tarock, also known as Illustrated Tapp, is a three-player tarot card game, played mainly in Austria, which uses the 54-card Industrie und Glück deck. Furr describes it as being "identical to Tapp but for the addition of a special announcement, allowing a Declarer to capitalize on a very good hand... spicing up the game considerably." Point Tarock is sometimes confused with its close cousin, Illustrated Tarock.

Name

There is no consensus over the name of this game, which is variously called Point Tarock or Illustrated Tarock. Confusingly there is a closely related, but more complex variant which is also called Illustrated Tarock or Point Tarock or both. Since illustriertes implies "embellished", there is a logic in using Point Tarock for this variant which involves point-bidding and Illustrated Tarock for the more complex variant that is embellished with additional announcements and bonuses.

Cards

The game is played with the 54-card French-suited Industrie und Glück deck. It includes 22 trumps numbered in Roman numerals with the exception of the highest, the Sküs or Fool. The second highest trump, the XXI, is known as the Mond while the lowest trump, I, is called the Pagat. The Sküs, Mond, and Pagat are together known as the Trull or "Honours" and are worth 5 points each. Other trumps are worth only 1 point.
The 32 plain suit cards consist of four courts: King, Queen, Cavalier and Valet, along with four pip cards. The cards rank as follows:
Kings and Honours are worth 5 points, Queens 4, Cavaliers 3, Valets 2, and the pips 1. Like score counting in other Tarock games, 2 points are subtracted from each trick taken. There are 70 card points in each deal, so to win, the Declarer needs at least 36 points. Other than card points there are bonus points as described below.

Differences from Illustrated Tarock

Point Tarock is sometimes called Illustrated Tarock, for example by Furr, while others, such as Bamberger and Dummett, refer to Illustrated Tarock as Point Tarock. The main differences are:

Shuffling and dealing

Dealing takes places as in other three-hand Tarock games. After the cards have been shuffled and cut, the dealer sets out six cards face down on the table and then deals each player 16 cards, anticlockwise, in two packets of eight each.

Bidding

, to the right of the dealer, now opens the bidding with "pass" or Dreier. Middlehand may also pass or raise to an Untern. The dealer, rearhand, may pass or raise. Apart from Solo, the contracts must be bid for in ascending order. A player who has been overbid by a 'younger' or more 'junior' player may "hold" and has positional priority unless overbid again. The highest bidder becomes the declarer and plays alone against the other two players. The bidding increments are as follows:
Once the declarer has exchanged with the talon, she must decide how good her hand is and then announce the number of card points she will contract to win. The options attract additional game points and are as follows :
Each bid also includes the lower ones and may be kontra'd in whole or in part. So the declarer may announce "with 50!" and an opponent may say "Kontra the 50!" which means the kontra only applies to scores of 50 or more.

Bonuses

The rules on bonuses are variable but typically include:
If the declarer achieves her target, she wins the points above. If she announced "with 50" but only scores 46 card points, she pays each defender 1 point i.e. 10 points for the lost "with 50" minus 3+6 for the won "with 40" and "with 45".