It is a sophisticated variant of the Austrian game Préférence, which in turn descends from Spanish Ombre and French Boston.

It is renowned in the card game world for its many complicated rules and insistence on strategical approaches.

Popular in Russia since approximately the 1830s, Preferans quickly became the country's national card game.

Similar games are played in various other European countries, from Lithuania to Greece, where an earlier form of Russian Preferans is known as Prefa (Greek: Πρέφα).

Another distinguishing feature is the relatively independent roles played by the opponents of the soloist.

Preferans is played by three active players with a French-suited 32-card piquet deck.

A bidding process is used to decide which player declares the trump suit, as well as the contract, which is the required number of tricks the soloist must attain.

Beginning with the eldest hand, players bid for the privilege of declaring the contract and trump suit and playing as the soloist.

The ranking is first by number of tricks and then by suit as follows: spades, clubs, diamonds, hearts, and no trumps (in ascending order).

If no player bids at all, a special all-pass game is played (Russian: raspasovka).

Misère and all-pass games are special in that the object is to avoid tricks rather than win them.

If not successful (a situation called remise), the declarer loses the value of the contract multiplied by the number of undertricks (tricks missing) in dump points (×10), and also pays the same amount to each defender in whist points (×1).

Dump points are used for keeping track of the penalties that declarers or whisters have to pay for not winning the required number of tricks.

It differs from Sochi scoring in that the dump penalties for whisters in case the defenders do not win enough tricks are halved.

A common condition for ending the game is that each player must have reached a certain target score in pool points.

A player who wins more pool points than that target score performs an operation known as American aid.

The receiving player pays for this with ten times as many whist points, i.e. the equivalent amount.

Two horizontal lines divide each player's segment of the score sheet into three parts.

When a number in an area of the score sheet changes, the new value is written behind the previous value, separated from it by a period.

A small circle or diamond in the center of the score sheet, where all the players' triangles meet, is used to keep track of general agreements such as the required number of pool points to end the game.

Misère is a special bid that ranks between 8 with no trumps and 9 at spades, but can be regarded as having a contract value of 10.

The all-pass game (Russian: raspasovka or raspasy) is played when no player has made a bid.

These involve the talon, the dealer (if there are four players), and escalations in case several all-pass rounds occur in a row.

In case of two consecutive all-pass rounds, the second is played at doubled stakes.

For further consecutive all-pass rounds, this may either increase by 1 dump point or be doubled each time.

[4] Besides developing and diversifying within Imperial Russia, and then the Soviet Union, the game also expanded into other countries of Eastern and Central Europe.