Dreierles is a three-handed, trick-taking Tarot card game that is popular in the German region of central Baden.

It is very old and appears to be a south German cousin of Tapp Tarock, the oldest known 54-card Tarot game.

German soldiers fighting with Napoleon almost certainly introduced a Spanish modification to Dreierles that produced Baden's national game of Cego.

[1] The earliest record for this game dates to 1917 when, as Dreierle, it is mentioned in a poem in a Baden trade journal alongside Skat and Jassen.

[6] A 1951 article that assumes Dreierles is a simplified 20th-century variant of Cego and confirms that it was played in the 1920s.

[8] This explains the popular but misleading story that Cego was Spanish and brought home sometime after 1812 by Baden soldiers fighting for Napoleon in Spain.

Martin and McLeod believe it is almost certain that, in fact, Cego was created from Dreierles when a major modification in the use of the blind was imported from a Spanish version of Ombre called Cascarela, and that this accounts for the story that Cego was brought to Baden by Napoleonic soldiers after 1812.

In the plain suits there are 32 cards ranking from high to low as follows:[1] McLeod states that the rules of Dreierles are simpler than those of comparable Tarock games and that it is therefore a good introduction to the family.

The opponents or defenders take the bid number of cards from the top of the blind, expose them and hand them to the declarer.

They then pick up the unused portion of the blind without revealing them to the declarer, look at them and then lay them face down again; they count to the defending side at the end.

After discarding, the declarer says "ready" (fertig), whereupon a defender who bid at least Dreier may double the game value by knocking on the table.

[1] The declarer may announce an intention to take the last trick with trump 1 (pictured), the Pfeife ("fife" or "pipe"), by placing it face up on the table and leaving it there until it is played.

Note that even if the declarer wins every trick, the unused cards in the blind still count to the defenders.

The contracts and their factors:[1] There are two types of bonus: those for combinations held in the hand at the start and those for winning the last trick with the Pfeife.

Anna plays an Einer (value: x3), lays down the Pfeife (hoping for a 20¢ bonus if she wins the last trick with it), wins the game with 43 card points and claims a bonus for Ten Trumps, but loses the Pfeife in the last trick.

So Anna earns 60¢ for the win (20¢ for the 8 card points over 35 multiplied by 3 for the Einer) and 10¢ for the Ten Trump bonus making 70¢ in all.