Tarot card games
[7] The first known example of such cards was ordered by the Duke of Milan around 1420 and included 16 trumps with images of Greek and Roman gods.
Tarot games originated in Italy, and spread to most parts of Europe, notable exceptions being the British Isles, the Iberian peninsula, and the Balkans.
[10] The earliest detailed description of rules for a tarot game in any language were published by the Abbé de Marolles in Nevers in 1637.
[11][12] The abbot learnt this variant from Princess Louise-Marie of Gonzague-Nevers, who introduced some rule variations from the normal game.
There were payments for declaring certain card combinations at the start, for playing the Ace of Coins and for taking the last trick with a King or the Pagat.
[17] In 1781, Court de Gébelin published an essay associating the cards with ancient wisdom, the earliest record of this idea, subsequently debunked by Dummett.
[23] In Austria, Tarock games, especially Königrufen, have become widespread and there are several major national and international tournaments each year.
Tarocchi (Italian, singular Tarocco), and similar names in other languages, is a specific form of playing card deck used for different trick-taking games.
An earlier name of the game Trionfi is first recorded in the diary of Giusto Giusti in September 1440[24] In other early documents it was called ludus triumphorum or similar.
The poet Francesco Berni mocked this word in his Capitolo del Gioco della Primiera written in 1526.
The first basic rules for the game of Tarocco appear in the manuscript of Martiano da Tortona, the next are known from the year 1637.
Both decks include 21 trumps and The Fool, a suitless card that excuses the player from following suit.
The Tarot Nouveau, of Frankfurt origin, has trumps which depict scenes of traditional social activities.
The most common Piedmontese tarot games are Scarto, Mitigati, Chiamare il Re, and Partita which can be found in Pinerolo and Turin.
Tarock games, Dummett's Type III, differ from other forms in the function of the Fool which is now simply the highest trump.
The games are widely played in the Upper Rhine valley and its surrounding hills such as the Black Forest or the Vosges, and the countries within the boundaries of the former Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, for which even the name 'Tarockania' (Tarockanien) has been coined.
The individual Tarock game variants differ too widely from one another to give a general description of play.
Austrian-Hungarian Tarock and Italian Tarocco decks are a smaller subset, of 63, 54, 40, or even 36 cards, suitable only for games of a particular region.
They usually include the Fool (Excuse or Sküs), the I (Pagat Petit, Bagatto or Little Man) and the XXI (Mond) plus all the court cards.
Dummett argues that the tedious work of counting tricks and card points separately led players to fuse the two processes into a single operation.
There are several practical methods, but all are designed to achieve the same aim: a quick and relatively simple way of calculating the score.
[b] Mayr and Sedlaczek described 3 common systems:[33] The first, easiest and oldest method is counting in threes with low cards.
The symbolic tarot images have no effect in the game itself other than influencing the naming of a few of the cards (Fool, Mond, Pagat, Little Man).
The design traditions of these decks evolved independently, and they often bear only numbers and whimsical scenes arbitrarily chosen by the engraver.
E.g. the moon that is commonly visible at the bottom left corner of the trump card 21 stems from confusion of the German word Mond, meaning "moon", with Italian mondo and French monde, meaning "world", the usual symbol associated with the trump card 21 on Italian suited tarots.
