thread of tarot (the game)

it is very good!! like a streamlined version of bridge or something (or a french card version of the texas 42 domino game)

there’s a tarot app that i have spent much time with on airplanes

donna do you play 4-player or 5-player? i think 5-player is the most fun

tbh i haven’t played in years but we mostly did 4-player iirc. we did 3 a couple times but i found it unsatisfying. my friends and i would start playing at like 9 or 10, and then a case of beer, a bottle of pastis and approx. eight million cigarettes later, whoops the sun’s coming up!

what app do you use tracer? i kinda want to buy a deck and try to teach ppl how to play. i also really like scopa although the game play is very different.

― donna rouge, Saturday, 6 December 2025 16:40 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

this is the one i use. it works offline. you gotta pay for it. but it works very well. varying levels of difficulty, play with 3, 4, or 5 players, can replay hands if you want.

https://www.eryodsoft.com/en/games/tarot

5 players is best imo because it introduces the element of surprise in terms of who the high bidder's partner is. the high bidder calls a particular king, and whoever has that king is their partner. they can be revealed early or late in the game, depending on what gets led.

i still struggle with remembering the various points thresholds for winning your bid. when i play with real cards and real people i'm pretty sure we just play "petit" or "garde" but the app also lets you bid without using "le chien" eg the pot of cards you supplement your hand with, which is harder, so requires fewer points to win, and i think even another type which i can't remember

anyway - TAROT! the only card game i'm aware of with five suits! and four face cards in each one!!

I never knew this

After each round, the cards are gathered, cut by the previous dealer, and dealt by the person to the right of the previous dealer. The cards are not commonly shuffled other than the "soft shuffling" that occurs as a natural result of playing the cards. By not shuffling, groups of desirable cards are kept together such that one person generally has a favorable enough hand to open the bidding. With shuffling between deals it is unlikely that any one player will be willing to bid on the hand dealt; this leads to multiple redeals before a hand is actually played.

that explains a lot

tracer i saw you created this thread and then forgot to post in it! oops

anyway, i've been playing the app you recommended and getting the hang of it all over again after not playing it for over a decade. the advice it gives on when to pass/bid and what cards to play in a given trick is generally pretty good, with a few exceptions. my friend who taught me how to play did all the scoring whenever we played so i'm only just now getting acquainted with that whole process, it's actually not quite as complex as i'd thought. grasping the difference between bidding vs. contracts helps enormously.

i had also forgotten about the strategy of building your hand from the chien when you declare. and mentally tabulating the points in your hand so you can decide how high to bid. so many moving parts to this game!

i still struggle with remembering the various points thresholds for winning your bid. when i play with real cards and real people i'm pretty sure we just play "petit" or "garde" but the app also lets you bid without using "le chien" eg the pot of cards you supplement your hand with, which is harder, so requires fewer points to win, and i think even another type which i can't remember

the highest bid is "garde contre le chien", where you are so supremely confident in how strong your hand is that you give the chien to your opponents because you don't need those points to win at all. so hilariously cocky lol

also why are jeu de tarot decks so expensive on ebay?? the one i had my eye on jumped from $40 to $55 overnight!

donna rouge i can't remember where you are but FNAC sells them for about 10 bucks. there's an FNAC in quebec as well.

mentally tabulating the points in your hand so you can decide how high to bid

i'm so far from this. basically i'm like, if i have at least one bout and a roi i might think about bidding

ahh ok, i'm in the states. my friend who taught me the game lived in france for a few years, she had this deck

i’m pretty sure FNAC will have something very similar to that. Those designs don’t change much!