Préférence, frequently spelt Preference, is a Central and Eastern European 10-card plain-trick game with bidding, played by three players with a 32-card Piquet deck, and probably originating in early 19th century Austria, becoming the second most popular game in Vienna by 1980.

[4] A game of this name was already mentioned as popular in Vienna in 1803,[5] but Depaulis has found references as early as 1801 in Bohemia and notes that it may even have been known in Russia before 1800.

[4] Nevertheless, the earliest known description is in an 1829 Austrian game anthology,[6][7][8][9] Préférence quickly became popular in Imperial Russia as well.

McLeod and Geiser group Préférence with the Rams family of card games whose distinctive feature is that players may choose to opt out of a particular deal if they believe their cards are not sufficiently good to win a trick or the minimum specified number of tricks.

[11] Préférence is named after the ranking of preferred suits for bidding purposes, an innovative feature at the time of its introduction.

In Austria, the game is also known as Pudeln, Polackeln or Polacheln, the last two names suggesting a connexion with Poland, Polacken being Austro-Bavarian for "Poles" and similar to the Italian word, polacco.

Geiser further states that, in Bavaria, the game is known as Wallachen or Walachen which points to a link with Wallachia in modern-day Romania,[12] however a closer relative appears to be the Bavarian game of Bolachen, whose name is phonetically close to the Austro-Bavarian, Polacheln.

The dealer shuffles the pack, has the player to the right cut and then deals clockwise, beginning with forehand to the left.

Suits rank in ascending order as follows: Clubs < Spades < Diamonds < Hearts.

An earlier bidder may hold a later bid by saying "mine" (selbst) and play in the higher-ranking suit.

Once the declarer has announced trumps, the others in order must decide whether to play (helfen) or drop out (passen) of the current hand.

Each trick won was worth 1 kreuzer (kr) in Clubs, 2 in Spades, 3 in Diamonds and 4 in Préference.

Settlement was as follows: The rules allow a player to play ‘from the hand’ (i.e. without the talon) but do not say how this affects the bid ranking or the game value.

Players bid for the privilege of becoming the soloist and declaring the trump suit and mode of play.

Except in a hand contract, the declarer takes the talon and discards two cards face down.

In contrast to ordinary suit contracts, these values are doubled if the hand version is played.

Defenders pay 10 times the base value into the pot if they do not win the required number of tricks.

For the Danube Swabians, a German-speaking minority in the former Kingdom of Hungary, a variant similar to West Balkans Préférence has been described.

The resulting danger of discord is addressed by formalising a number of rules of thumb for cooperative play.

These should normally be followed by all defenders – they invited their partner, in which case they are free to try more sophisticated approaches that may break these rules.

These rules may have the status of noncommittal advice, or they can be regarded as strong ethical obligations with an understanding that infractions that harm the other defender usually lead to voluntary compensation by side payments.

This unusual and extremely simplified variant of Préférence appeared in Foster's Complete Hoyle starting with the 1909 edition[20] and was also included in the 1922 rules of the United States Playing Card Company (USPCC).

Starting with eldest hand, each player may bid a desired trump suit or pass.

For this purpose suits rank hearts, diamonds, clubs, spades in descending order.

The player who names the highest suit becomes declarer and must win 6 of the 10 tricks as a soloist against the two defenders.

With two minor and possibly inadvertent changes that remove the game further from the European games (declarer must discard before taking up the widow, and in the second round of bidding players bid by paying immediately into the pot), these rules are still published on the USPCC website.

[22] Although this is not stated in any of the rules, players must also agree on a penalty in case declarer wins less than 6 tricks.

In addition to Illustrated Preference[23] and the Eastern European variants covered above, Austrian synonyms or variants listed by Geiser include:[12] In addition, the gambling game of Tippen is also known as Little Preference (Kleinpreference).