Schnapsen

Players and equipment

Schnapsen is a game for exactly two, and it is the game Austrians sit down to when there are two of them and a pack of cards. It is a point-trick game: the tricks you win are worth the cards in them, and the first player to reach 66 card points wins the deal. Along the way you can score a marriage, close the talon to shut your opponent out, and lose the lot by claiming too early. A deal takes a few minutes, a game a quarter of an hour.

The pack is twenty cards: ace, ten, king, queen and jack in each of the four suits. From a standard 52-card pack, take out everything from the two to the nine. Austrian players use German-suited cards, where the ace is the deuce or Sau, the queen is the Ober and the jack is the Unter; the ranks and values are the same, and a marriage there is a king with an Ober. Within every suit the order is ace, ten, king, queen, jack — the ten sits above the king, which is the first thing to get used to.

Ace

11

Highest of its suit

Ten

10

Second, above the king

King

4

Third

Queen

3

Fourth

Jack

2

Lowest

Each suit is worth 30, so the pack holds 120 card points, and 66 is just over half of them. Scores are kept in the head during a deal — the tradition is that nothing is written down until the deal is over — and the game score is kept on the sheet. SquareScores keeps the game score and nothing else: it deals no cards, sees no trick and does not know who has 66 until you say so.

The deal

Decide the first dealer however you like — a cut is usual; after that the deal alternates, so you deal every second hand. Shuffle, let your opponent cut, and deal three cards each. Turn the next card face up on the table: its suit is trumps for the deal. Then deal two more cards each, so you each hold five. The ten cards left over are the talon. Set them face down across the trump card so that it stays visible under them. After each trick both players draw one card from the top of the talon, and the face-up trump is the last card taken.

Play

Your opponent, the non-dealer, leads to the first trick. While the talon has cards in it the play is loose: you may play any card you like to a trick, whether or not you hold the suit led. The trick goes to the higher card of the suit led, unless a trump was played, in which case the higher trump takes it. The winner takes the top card of the talon, the loser takes the next, and the winner leads to the following trick. Hands stay at five cards until the talon runs out.

Before you lead — only then, and only as the leader — you may do two things.

The first is the trump jack exchange. If you hold the jack of trumps, you may swap it for the face-up trump card under the talon, just before you lead, as long as the talon is still open. Being on lead is the whole condition: you need not have won a trick, so the non-dealer may exchange before the first card is played, and you need not take the first chance — the jack can wait in your hand until a later lead. Once the talon is closed or gone, the exchange is off. The jack is worth 2 and the card you take is usually worth more, and the ten or ace of trumps is a card worth having.

The second is a marriage. If you hold the king and queen of one suit, you may declare them as you lead: say the value, lead one of the two cards and show the other. A marriage in a plain suit is worth 20 card points; a marriage in trumps is worth 40. The points are yours only once you have won a trick in the deal — a marriage declared before your first trick counts from the moment you take one, and if you never take a trick it counts for nothing. You cannot declare a marriage when you are the second player to a trick.

Either player, when about to lead, may close the talon: turn the face-up trump card over on top of it. You can only close once you have drawn your card from the last trick, so both hands are back to five. That is a promise to reach 66 from the cards already in your hand. From then on nobody draws, and the play becomes strict, as it does when the talon simply runs out. Strict play means: follow suit if you can, and beat the card led if you can. If a plain suit is led, play a higher card of that suit if you hold one, otherwise a lower card of that suit; with none of the suit, you must trump; with no trump either, play anything. If a trump is led, play a higher trump if you can, otherwise a lower one, otherwise anything. You can still declare a marriage when leading after a close, which is one of the ways Schnapsen differs from its German cousin Sixty-Six. You can exchange the trump jack and close in the same turn, exchange first.

When the talon is down to its last two cards and nobody has closed, the winner of the trick takes the face-down card and the loser takes the trump card, and the last five tricks are played strictly from the hand.

A deal ends when a player claims 66. You may claim the moment you have won a trick or declared a marriage — not at any other time — by saying you are out. Play stops at once and the cards are counted. If you have 66 or more, you win the deal; if you do not, your opponent wins it, and the penalty for a wrong claim is below. If neither player claims and the talon runs out, the deal goes to whoever wins the last trick, whatever the card points say.

Scoring

A deal is worth one, two or three game points to its winner, and the number depends on how badly the loser did, not on how many card points the winner has.

One

1

The loser has 33 or more card points

Two

2

The loser has at least one trick but fewer than 33 points

Three

3

The loser has taken no trick at all

Last trick

1

The talon is gone and nobody claimed: the winner of the last trick takes the deal

A marriage counts towards those 33 once the player has a trick, so a loser with one trick and a declared marriage can be over the line on very few cards. A loser in the two-point position is said to be Schneider, and one with no trick at all is Schwarz.

If you close the talon, the count is taken at the moment you closed. Win your 66 and you score one, two or three by what your opponent had when you turned the trump card over — the tricks they take afterwards do not rescue them, which is why closing is so strong and why it is risky. Fail to reach 66, and the deal goes to your opponent for two points, or three if they had no trick when you closed, whatever their card points are. Lose the last trick after closing and you have failed, even with 66 in your pile. If your opponent reaches 66 and claims before you do after you have closed, they take the same two or three.

A wrong claim costs you the deal: your opponent scores two points, or three if they had not yet won a trick when you claimed. If you claim correctly it does not matter that your opponent also had 66 — they should have said so first.

On SquareScores a round on the sheet is one deal. When a deal ends, the winner enters the game points it was worth — 1, 2 or 3 — in their own column, and the loser's cell stays blank. You can type only in your own column; the host can type in either, and correct either. The line is at 7 and it stays there — a game of Schnapsen is to 7 at every table — and the app counts up: the first player whose column reaches 7 has won the game. At an Austrian table the same thing is done the other way round, both players starting at 7 and counting down to zero; the sum is identical, only the direction differs. When a column reaches 7, tap End match to bank the game, and Next match deals again. Winning by more than 7 is still one game won, and the app counts matches, not points, across a session.

A worked deal

Alice and Ben are playing with diamonds as trumps. The talon has run out, and when Alice wins the sixth trick she says she is out. They turn over their piles and count.

Alice's aces

11

Ace of hearts

Alice's tens

20

Hearts and spades

Alice's court cards

15

King and queen of diamonds, king of clubs, jacks of spades and diamonds

Alice's marriage

40

King and queen of diamonds, declared when she led the king

Alice

86

Her total for the deal

Ben's tricks

28

Ace and ten of diamonds, king and queen of hearts

Game points

2 to Alice

Ben is under 33 and took a trick

Alice has 86, which is well over 66: she could in fact have claimed a trick earlier, the moment the trump marriage put her past the line, and nobody would have minded. Ben has 28 card points from two tricks. He is under 33 with a trick taken, so Alice scores two game points for the deal and enters 2 in her column. Had Ben been held to no trick at all it would have been three; had he reached 33 — one more king and a jack would have done it — Alice would have scored only one.

Ending

The game is won by the first player to reach 7 game points. Deals are short and worth up to three points apiece, so a game is typically three to five deals, and a player two points behind is never out of it. When somebody reaches 7, tap End match on the sheet; the app records who won and the next match starts from zero. Many players count a session in games won, and SquareScores does that for you across the matches you play.

Count to 66, and count your opponent too

Everything in Schnapsen comes back to two running totals, yours and theirs, kept in your head. A card played is a card known: 120 points in the pack, 30 to a suit, and once you have seen where the aces and tens have gone you know roughly where the rest are. Beginners count their own points and claim; good players count the opponent's points as well, because that number decides whether a deal is worth one, two or three, and whether a close is safe. Practise saying both totals to yourself after every trick.

When to close

Closing is the heart of the game. Close when the five cards in your hand, plus what you have already won, will carry you to 66 under strict play against anything your opponent can hold — and do it as early as that becomes true, because the count is frozen at the moment you close. A close while your opponent has no trick is worth three points if it comes off; a close with them on 30 is worth two; wait until they have 33 and the same hand is worth one. The other side of the ledger is that a close that fails costs two or three, whatever your card points were, so a close on hope rather than arithmetic loses games.

Marriages and the trump jack

A trump marriage is 40 points, well over half of what you need, and a plain marriage is 20, nearly a third. Hold a king while the queen might come, and keep an eye on the face-up trump: if it is a king or queen, the jack exchange can complete a trump marriage in one move. Remember that a marriage only counts once you have won a trick, so declare it when you lead to a trick you expect to win, or after you have one already. Declaring one and then losing every trick scores nothing.

Leading in the loose phase

While the talon is open, nothing forces your opponent to follow suit, so leading an ace into the unknown invites a trump. Lead low cards — jacks and queens you do not need — and keep the aces and tens for taking tricks your opponent leads into. The exception is when you want to win the trick to draw first or to unlock a marriage; then lead the strongest thing you have. Winning a trick also puts you on lead, and leading is the only moment you can exchange the trump jack.

The strict phase and the last trick

Once the talon is closed or exhausted, the rules change completely: you must follow suit and must beat the card led if you can. Now a long suit with the top cards in it is a run of forced wins, and a trump lead pulls your opponent's trumps whether they like it or not. If nobody has claimed, the last trick decides the deal outright, so count how many trumps are left and who will hold the last one. A player who closed and then loses the last trick loses the deal, however many points they have.

Sharp Schnapsen

The tournament rules, scharfes Schnapsen, tighten the home game in six places. You turn your won tricks face down and do not look at them again until the deal is over. You write nothing down during a deal. You declare a marriage by leading the king, never the queen. You cannot exchange the trump jack until you have won a trick, nor once the talon is down to two cards — so the exchange happens only before the second, third or fourth trick. You cannot close with two cards left. And you cannot declare a marriage before you have won a trick, so the non-dealer never declares one on the opening lead. Everything else is as above; the kitchen-table game, where you may look through your own tricks, is soft Schnapsen.

Counting the opponent's points at the end of a closed deal

Some tournaments ignore the frozen count. When the closer wins, the opponent's card points and tricks are counted at the end of the deal, including whatever they took after the close. That makes closing a little less rewarding and a little less dangerous for the player who did not close. Agree which count applies before the first deal.

Penalties for a wrong claim

Tables differ on what a false claim costs. The rule given above — two points to the opponent, or three if they had no trick — is the one that stops a player claiming speculatively on 60 points. Some tables instead award the opponent what the claimer would have scored had the claim been right, which can be as little as one point. The stricter rule is the safer one to adopt.

Sixty-Six

The German game Schnapsen grew out of, and a close cousin rather than the same game. Sixty-Six is played with 24 cards, the nines added, and six cards each; the nine of trumps is the card exchanged for the turn-up; marriages cannot be declared once the talon is closed or exhausted; the last trick is worth 10 card points, so a deal can be drawn at 65 all; you may close before drawing from the talon as well as after; and the game is scored upwards from zero to 7. If you learnt the game in Germany those are the rules you know, and the sheet is used in just the same way.

Bummerl and the long game

In Austria the score runs down from 7, and at many tables a game lost is called a Bummerl. Some players keep a tally of Bummerl across a whole session, and some of those count a game lost on zero — a Schneider-Bummerl — as two. Neither is a rule of the game; it is table practice, and tables differ. SquareScores counts games won, which comes to the same thing from the other side; if your table counts a Schneider-Bummerl double, the sheet's match count will not, and you will want to note it.

Bauernschnapsen and Talon-Schnapsen

The four-handed partnership game and the three-player game are played with the same pack and the same values, but with bidding, contracts and a different scoring table, and they are different games. If your table is four, Bauernschnapsen is what you want, and it is worth its own entry.

How many cards do you deal in Schnapsen?

Five each from a pack of twenty, dealt three and then two with the trump card turned up between them. The ten cards that remain form the talon, which both players draw from after each trick, and the face-up trump is the last card taken from it.

How many points do you need to win a deal of Schnapsen?

Sixty-six card points, which is just over half the 120 in the pack. The ace is 11, the ten 10, the king 4, the queen 3 and the jack 2, and a king and queen of one suit declared together add 20, or 40 in trumps. You have to say you are out — the deal does not end by itself, and you may claim only just after winning a trick or declaring a marriage.

Do you have to follow suit in Schnapsen?

Not while the talon is open: you may play any card to any trick. Once the talon is closed or exhausted you must follow suit and must beat the card led if you can, and must trump if you have no card of the suit led. That switch from loose to strict play is the character of the game.

What does it mean to close the talon in Schnapsen?

The player about to lead turns the face-up trump card over on top of the talon. Nobody draws any more cards, play becomes strict, and the closer promises to reach 66 from the cards in hand. You can close only after drawing back to five cards, and only when you are about to lead. If the closer makes it, the deal is scored by what the opponent had at the moment of closing; if the closer fails, the opponent scores two game points, or three if they had no trick at the close.

How many game points do you need to win at Schnapsen?

Seven. Each deal is worth one point if the loser had 33 or more, two if the loser had a trick but fewer than 33, and three if the loser took no trick. Austrians start both players at 7 and count down to zero; SquareScores counts up to 7, which comes to the same thing.

What is the difference between Schnapsen and Sixty-Six?

Schnapsen uses twenty cards and five-card hands; Sixty-Six uses twenty-four, with the nines, and six-card hands. In Schnapsen you can still declare a marriage after the talon is closed and the last trick carries no card points (it still takes the deal if nobody has claimed); in Sixty-Six marriages stop at the close, the last trick is worth ten points, and you may close before drawing. The card values, 66 to win a deal and 7 to win a game are the same in both.

What happens if both players have 66 in Schnapsen?

The player who claims first and is right wins the deal. A player who has 66 but has not said so has not won anything, and if their opponent claims correctly a trick later the opponent takes the deal. It is also why you cannot claim at just any time: a claim is allowed only immediately after winning a trick or declaring a marriage.

Can you look at the tricks you have won in Schnapsen?

In the relaxed home game, yes, you may look through your own tricks, and at your opponent's last trick until the next card is led. In sharp Schnapsen, the tournament game, tricks are turned face down and nobody looks at them again until the deal is over, so the count has to be kept in your head.