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Dappen

Introduction

Dappen is a Tarot game for 6 or 7 players that is played in a few places in the Upper Black Forest in southwest Germany using Cego cards. This entertaining game, which has almost certainly been played in this area since the early 19th century, was unknown to card game researchers outside the region until 2024 when Achim Laber tracked down some of the remaining players. It is historically related to the Swiss game Troggu, which is played in the German speaking eastern part of canton Wallis.

Dappen is the fourth known game for which Cego cards are used. There are two other genuine Tarot games, namely Cego, which is popular throughout the Black Forest, and Dreierles, a 3-player game played further north, in central Baden. The fourth is a gambling game known as Vier-Anderle, Strassenwart or Cego-Zwick.

In each deal of Dappen there is stack of 12 cards, known as the Dapp, face down on the table, and the remaining cards are dealt equally to the players. One player plays alone and the others form a large team. The Dapp belongs to the lone player who can use it to improve their hand. The cards are then played in 7 or 6 tricks after which each side counts the value of the cards in the tricks they have taken. The lone player benefits from the point value of the cards in the Dapp, and needs at least half the total value of cards in the pack to win.

Thanks are due to Achim Laber, the Black Forest Ranger and author of the website cego.de, who found about the game and introduced us to the players. He continues to publicise Dappen and to collect information on places where it was and in some cases still is played. Thanks also to Ulf Martin who helped to clarify the rules and wrote the German web page on which this page is based.

We will first describe the cards and the version of Dappen played by the Klausmann family in Furtwangen. This is followed by notes on other variants, for which in some cases we have only partial information based on the memories of former players, and by section with thoughts on the history of the game.

Cego Cards

The pack has 54 cards: 22 trumps and 8 cards in each of the four suits hearts, diamonds clubs and spades. The most common design used at present (in the 2020's) is 'Adler Cego' which has pictures of various animals on the trumps.

The trumps from 1 (lowest) up to 21 are identified by large Arabic numbers and trumps 2 to 20 have pictures of various animals. Trump 1 is known as der Geiß (goat) and trump 21 is der Mund (mouth) or der Mond (moon), although neither name corresponds to the design of the card. The highest trump is der Gstieß, a jester/musician, which functions as the 22 but has no printed number.

Geiss Mond Gstiess

In each of the four suits clubs (Kreuz) ♣, spades (Pik / Schippe) ♠, hearts (Herz) ♥ and diamonds (Karo / Eckstein) ♦ there are four picture cards, from high to low king (König), queen (Dame), knight (Ritter, Reiter, Cavall) and jack (Bube).

Below these in each suit there are four empty cards (Leere / Brettle). In the black suits (♠♣) these rank from high to low 10, 9, 8, 7. In the red suits (♥♦) they rank from high to low A, 2, 3, 4. So as usual in 54-card Tarot games the red pip cards rank in reverse order with the Aces immediately below the Jack and the 4 lowest.

At the end of 2023 Achim Laber published a new deck Schwarzwald Cego designed by Anita "Fox" Schwörer featuring local wildlife and personalities.

Card Values

The cards have point values as follows.

Gstieß, Mund (21), Geiß (1) 5 each
Kings 4 each
Knights 3 each
Jacks 2 each
Other cards 1 each

At the end of the play the cards tricks are counted in pairs and one point is deducted from the value of each pair. The usual way to do this is so far as possible to pair each counting card (worth 2-5 points) with a 1-point card, so that the value of the pair is just the value of the counting card. With practice this is the quickest method and has the advantage of beginning to mix the cards in preparation for the next deal. In a 6-player game no matter how the cards are grouped into pairs the total value of cards in the pack is 79. In a 7-player game, since each trick contains an odd number of cards, it is possible that each side will have one card left over. This odd card counts 1 less than its value so that the total value is 78. For discussion of other methods of counting card points that produce the same result see counting points in tarot games.

Furtwangen version

This description is based on a game played on 3 July 2024 in the Krone restaurant in Schönenbach, a district of the small town of Furtwangen, at the invitation of Margit Klausmann. The players were Sally Prime, John McLeod, Ulf Martin, Achim Laber and the Klausmann family represented by Simone, Nils and Bernd and their mother Margit. The game evening was preceded by an intensive email exchange with Margit Klausmann to clarify the rules. Many thanks to all involved!

Achim Laber writes: "The rules come from Margit Klausmann from Furtwangen, who learnt Dappen as a child from her father from Schönwald, who died young. The game was revived by her mother-in-law from Neukirch. According to her memories, the rules were identical. It is played regularly in the family circle with the grandparents and their 5 children. In Furtwangen there is also a group of older women who meet once a month in a pub and play it there."

Players, Deal

There are 6 or 7 active players. If there are 8 players at the table, the dealer sits out while the other 7 play. Deal and play are anticlockwise.

The first dealer is chosen by any convenient random method and thereafter the turn to deal passes to the right after each hand.

The dealer shuffles and the player to dealer's left cuts.

  • In the 6-player game the dealer deals a batch of 4 cards to each player, then a packet of 6 cards face down to the Dapp, then a batch of 3 cards each, then 6 more cards to the Dapp, so that each player has a hand of 7 cards and there are 12 in the Dapp..
  • In the 7-player game the deal is 3 to each, 6 to the Dapp, 3 more each, 6 more to the Dapp, so that each player has 6 cards and there are 12 in the Dapp.
  • If there are 8 players, the dealer deals to the other 7 players only - the dealer has no hand and does not take part in the game until the next deal.

Contracts, Bidding

The bidding determines which player will play alone against a team of 5 or 6 opponents.

The purpose of first round of bidding is to find out if there is any volunteer to play a Solo, i.e. to play alone using the cards they were dealt. Players speak in turn starting with the player to dealer's right. Players who do not want to volunteer pass by saying "Fort Solo!" or just "Fort!". If any player bids "Solo" that is the end of the bidding.

In most deals no one will want to play a Solo, so all will pass in the first round of bidding. In this case there is a second round to determine which player will dappen, that is play alone with the advantage of using the Dapp to improve their hand. Again players speak in turn starting with the player to dealer's right. A player can pass by saying "Fort!" or bid to play alone by saying "Ich dappe!" or by the gesture of reaching out for the face down Dapp cards.

After a player has bid to dappen, the players who have not yet passed have the opportunity to strecken (stretch) - that is bid to play alone instead of the Dapper. They would say "Ich strecke!" or reach out to take the Dapp cards from the first bidder. In this case the first bidder can either pass, by saying "gut" or giving the Dapp cards to the Strecker, or keep the bid by picking up the Dapp cards, optionally saying "selber" (myself).

There can never be more than two bidders: if a player dapps and another player stretches, the remaining players cannot say anything. If two players wanted to stretch, the player nearest in rotation after the dapper would have priority. If a player stretches, the bidding round ends as soon as the dapper decides whether to play themselves or to allow the stretcher to do so. No one looks as the Dapp cards until it is decided who will play alone.

Compulsory Dappen. There are two cases in which a player must dappen if no one has done so before.

  1. A player who holds a high trump which cannot be captured by another player leading trumps from the top must dappen. In other words, the player must dappen if holding the Gstieß, or the 21 with at least one other trump, or the 20 with at least two other trumps, or the 19 with at least three other trumps, etc.
  2. If all the players except the last two have passed, the second to last player must dappen. That is the player to dealer's left if there are 6 or 7 players, or the player two places to dealer's left at a table of 8, since in that case the dealer does not take part.

These rules guarantee that there will always be a lone player, and that there will always be a possibility for a player after the first bidder to strecken. Note that a player who is forced to bid by condition (a) can safely pass after a stretch, knowing that it is not possible for the second bidder to win all the tricks.

If it is discovered during the play that a player passed when they should have bid according to condition (a), the deal is abandoned and the offender must pay all the other players has though they had bid and lost every trick - that is 40 cents each for a Marsch according to the scoring table below. The deal then passes to the next player in turn.

After a player has bid dappen, there is no compulsion for any subsequent player to bid, however good their hand is. However a subsequent player with a strong enough hand will want to strecken as this doubles the score, whoever becomes the lone player.

Dapp Exchange

If the bid is a dappen (or strecken or selber), the lone player picks up the 12 cards of the Dapp for a total of 18 or 19 cards (according to the number of players) and then discards 12 cards face down to reduce their hand back to its original size of 6 or 7 cards. It is illegal to discard any cards that are worth 5 points (kings, Gstieß, Mund (21) or Geiß (1)).

If after picking up the Dapp the lone player holds all seven 5-point cards the bidder shows them to the other players, there is no play, and the hand is scored as though the bidder had won all the tricks. The same happens in the 6-player game if a player is dealt all seven 5-point cards and plays a Solo.

Ulti

Before leading to the first trick, if the bidder holds the trump 1, 2 or 3 in their hand, they may place one or more of these cards face up on the table. This is a commitment to win the last trick or tricks with this card (or these cards).

Play

The lone player begins by leading any card from their hand to the first trick. Players must follow suit if possible (including playing a trump if trumps were led). A player who has no card of the suit that was led must play a trump if possible. A player who has no card of the suit led and no trumps may play any card. There is never any obligation to beat the cards previously played to a trick.

Each trick is won by the highest trump in it, or if it contains no trumps by the highest card of the suit that was led. The cards are stored face down by the winning team, and the winner of the trick leads any card from their hand to the next.

If any Ulti cards have been laid out by the bidder, these cards still count as part of the bidder's hand, except that they cannot be played until the bidder has no option, either having no other cards left, or being forced to play play an Ulti card when a trump is required having no other trumps. If there is more than one Ulti card on the table they must be played in descending order, 3 before 2 before 1.

The Gstieß normally counts as the highest trump, effectively the 22, except in one case. If an opponent of the bidder has no trumps other than the Gstieß, they are not obliged to play the Gstieß when a trump is required - they can choose withhold the Gstieß and play a suit card of their choice instead. Withholding the Gstieß is known as gstiesieren. If the Gstieß is withheld in this way it loses all its power and must be kept by the owner until the last trick. In the last trick, the player shows the Gstieß and adds it to their team's tricks. If the bidder wins this trick, it will be one card short, and the opponents' team must give the bidder one card from their tricks (a 1-point card if available) to compensate for this.

If the player who withheld the Gstieß wins the second to last trick, they begin the last trick by showing the Gstieß, the player to their right plays their card, and that card counts as the card led to the last trick for the purpose of determining who wins the trick.

If the Gstieß is played to the last trick but has not been withheld - because in the previous tricks the Gstieß owner always played a trump when required to - then the Gstieß counts as the 22 as usual and wins the last trick.

Scoring

When all the tricks have been played, each side counts their card points as described above. The cards in the Dapp belong to the bidder except in the unusual case where the bidder took no tricks at all, in which case all the cards including the Dapp belong to the opponents' team. The opponents win if they have 40 or more points, that is more than half the total. If the opponents have 39 points or fewer the lone player wins. To calculate the score the losing side's card point total is subtracted from 40 and the difference is rounded to the nearest 5, with a minimum of 5. This is the amount in cents that the lone player wins from or loses to each member of the opposing team if the bid was dappen and there was only one bidder.

If the bid was Solo and the lone player loses the payment is calculated in the same way, but if the lone player wins a Solo the payment from each opponent is doubled.

If there were two bidders (dappen and strecken) then the payment to or from each opponent is doubled, irrespective of whether the lone player won or lost.

The actual amounts are as follows.

Losing side's
card points		 Difference
from 40		 Solo won
by bidder		 Solo won by
opponents		 Simple
dappen		 Dappen and
strecken
33-39 1-7 10 cents 5 cents 5 cents 10 cents
28-32 8-12 20 cents 10 cents 10 cents 20 cents
23-27 13-17 30 cents 15 cents 15 cents 30 cents
18-22 18-22 40 cents 20 cents 20 cents 40 cents
13-17 23-17 50 cents 25 cents 25 cents 50 cents
8-12 28-32 60 cents 30 cents 30 cents 60 cents
3-7 33-37 70 cents 35 cents 35 cents 70 cents
0-2* 38-40 80 cents 40 cents 40 cents 80 cents

*The payment for a Marsch (march), in which one team wins all the tricks, is normally 40 cents each for the 40 card points, doubled in case of a won Solo or if there were two bidders. However there are two cases in which if the bidder wins a Marsch, one opponent has to pay on behalf of the whole opposing team.

  1. If there were two bidders, then the opponents' team is expected to win at least one trick. If the lone player wins all the tricks then the other player who bid has to pay the whole amount of 2 Euro (6 players) or 2.40 Euro (7 players) to the bidder and the other opponents do not pay anything.
  2. If the bidder wins every trick when one of the opponents has gstiesiert, then this opponent has to pay on behalf of the whole opposing team.

In the unlikely event that the lone player wins all the tricks when one opponent has bid and another has gstiesiert these two opponents share the payment equally.

If the lone player laid out one or more Ulti cards, these are paid for separately. The 3 costs 10 cents, the 2 costs 20 cents, and the 1 (Geiß) costs 30 cents.

Laying out any of these cards is a commitment to win the final tricks with them in descending order. For any that succeed, all the opponents pay the lone player. For any that fail, either being beaten by a higher trump or because the lone player is forced to play them prematurely, the lone player must pay all the opponents. These payments are independent of each other and of the payment for the game.

Example. In a 6-player game the lone player plays an uncontested dapp, laying out the 3 and the 1. The 3 is beaten by an opponent in the penultimate trick but the 1 wins the last trick. The opponents win just that one trick containing the 3, the 16, two kings, a queen and a knight. The opponents have have 16 card points so the lone player wins 25 cents for the game and 30 cents for winning the last trick with the 1 but loses 10 cents for the failed 3. Therefore each opponent pays 45 cents to the lone player (25+30-10): total 2.25 Euro.

Notes

Picking up the Dapp may sometimes make the lone player's hand weaker rather than improving it, because kings cannot be discarded. Kings seldom win tricks until most or all of the trumps have been drawn, because there will usually be at least one player with no cards of the suit. Therefore a player whose original hand is mostly trumps may do better to bid a Solo rather than a Dapp, to avoid the risk of having to throw trumps away when kings are found in the Dapp.

Bidding voluntarily without a 'stop' - a high trump that can take a trick against a player leading the top trumps in succession - is known as 'stealing' (stehlen). If you steal it may be wise to insist on being the lone player if there is a stretch, even though you expect to lose. If you pass there is the risk that the stretcher will win all the tricks and you will be responsible for paying for the whole opposing team. The same applies if you are forced to dappen with a weak hand as the penultimate player when all before you have passed, and the last player stretches

The point of gstießieren is to allow a defender to throw a valuable suit card on a trick that the defenders are already winning or expected to win, rather than uselessly playing the Gstieß on a trick that the team has already won. It may also cause problems for a lone player who has the 21 and is unsure whether the Gstieß is still in the hand of a player who has not yet shown out of trumps.

The tactic of drawing trumps, in which the lone player repeatedly leads trumps to try to exhaust the opponents' trumps is known as fahren (driving).

Variations

The dealer may choose deal the Dapp at the start and the middle: 6 cards to the Dapp, 3 or 4 to each player, 6 more to the Dapp, 3 more to each player.

Some play with no compulsory Dapp if holding a trump stop (condition (a) above). The second to last player must still dappen if all previous players have passed. This was described by the Klausmann family as a variant for children.

The scoring above is what is described as a "full game" (1 cent per card point). It is also possible to play a "half game" (½ cent per card point) in which case the payment is calculated by rounding the losers' difference from 40 to the nearest 10 (instead of 5), totals less than 5 or ending in 5 being rounded up, and halving the result. The payment table is then as follows:

Losing side's
card points		 Difference
from 40		 Solo won
by bidder		 Solo won by
opponents		 Simple
dappen		 Dappen and
strecken
26-39 1-14 10 cents 5 cents 5 cents 10 cents
16-25 15-24 20 cents 10 cents 10 cents 20 cents
6-15 25-34 30 cents 15 cents 15 cents 30 cents
0-5 36-40 40 cents 20 cents 20 cents 40 cents

Also the payment for the Ultis can be halved: 5 cents for the 3, 10 cents for the 2 and 15 cents for the 1.

These options are sometimes mixed: half game with full ulti or full game with half ulti.

In case of a Marsch by the lone player when two players have bid, some play that the other bidder only has to pay half the cost on behalf of the team. The logic is that the bidder who plays against the lone player should compensate the rest of the team for having doubled the payment for the game by bidding. The other players pay the lone player what they would have paid for an undoubled game.

Some play that if the lone player wins a Marsch by having seven 5-point cards and there was a second bidder, each member of the opponents' team pays their own share.

Since the game we played with the Klausmanns was a family game it was effectively not played for money. It was a half game with half ultis. We were each provided with a bowl of 200 cents in 5-, 10-, 20- and 50-cent coins which were used to settle up after each hand. At the end of the session the amounts showed how much each player had hypothetically won or lost but all the coins were then returned to the hosts. For a full game with full ultis they would have started with 500 cents each.

Breitnau version

This simpler version of Dappen was described to Achim Laber by Willi Wangler, who remembers it from his youth. It may be that some of the details have been forgotten.

As in Furtwangen, there are 6 or 7 active players, or 8 can play with the dealer sitting out. Deal and play are anticlockwise. As in Furtwangen each player receives 7 or 6 cards and there are 12 face down in the Dapp.

As usual there are two rounds of bidding.

  1. In the Solo round, players say in turn, starting to the right of the dealer, whether they want to play Solo (without using the Dapp) or pass ('Fort Solo!'). If anyone bids Solo that ends the bidding.
  2. If all pass in the Solo round then starting again to dealer's right, players say in turn whether they want to dapp (play alone after exchanging cards with the Dapp) or pass. If a player dapps any subsequent player who wants to dapp can stretch (strecken), to which the first bidder replies selber (myself) if still wishing to play alone or passes. If the first bidder says selber the second bidder can pass or bid again with a push (stupfen), to which the first bidder again can reply selber, keeping the right to play alone, or pass, to let the other bidder play alone.

There is no compulsory Dapp bid, and if all players pass in the second round, the game falls into the hole ("Das Spiel kommt ins Loch"): the cards are thrown in without payment and the next player deals.

In a Solo no one looks at the Dapp until the end of the play. In all other bids (dappen, strecken, stupfen, selber) the lone player picks up the 12 cards of the Dapp without showing them to the other players and discards 12 cards face down from the 18 or 19 cards they have. Five-point cards cannot be discarded.

The rules of play are as in Furtwangen: the lone player leads to the first trick, players must follow suit and must trump if void of the suit that was led. The trick is won by the highest trump in it, or by the highest card of the suit led if no trumps were played. The winner of each trick leads to the next.

There are no Ulti cards and there is no gstiesieren - the Gstieß always functions as the highest trump (22).

When counting the number of card points taken by each side, the 12 Dapp cards count for the lone player unless the opponents win every trick, in which case they benefit from the Dapp cards as well and the lone player has zero.

The difference between the losing side's card points and 40 is first multiplied by a factor depending on the lone player's bid It is then rounded up to the next higher multiple of 10 to give the amount in cents that the lone player pays to or receives from each opponent. The factors are:

  • Solo ×2 (the same whether it is won or lost)
  • Dappen ×1
  • Strecken (or Selber after Strecken) ×2
  • Stupfen (or Selber after Stupfen) ×3

Example. The bid is Stupfen and the opponents take 34 points. The difference is from 40 is 6, which is multplied by the factor 2 to give 12 and then rounded up to 20, so the lone player wins 20 cents from each opponent. If the opponents had taken 36 points the payment would only have been 10 cents each - that is (40-36)×2 = 8, rounded up to 10.

Buchenbach version

The rules of this version were obtained by Achim Laber from Thomas Eckmann, who is originally from Buchenbach.

This game is for six players only. The rules and scoring are similar to those in Breitnau but with some extra bids and some constraints on the play.

In the first bidding round, if a player bids Solo, a subsequent player can stretch (strecken) to pick up the Dapp. If no one stretches the bidding ends after the first round and the Solo is played. A stretch immediately ends the bidding (the Solo player cannot bid again) and the player who stretched picks up the Dapp.

If no one bids Solo there is a second round of bidding beginning with the player to the dealer's right in which players can pass or dapp. If a player dapps, then subsequent players can pass or overcall. The possible overcalls in ascending order are:

  • Ein Hannes (one Hannes): Same as Dapp but the overcalling player must hold at least one king.
  • Zwei Hannes (two Hannes): Same as Dapp but the overcalling player must hold at least two kings.
  • Geiß: Same as Dapp but the overcalling player must hold the Geiß (trump 1).

Hannes is a shortened form of the name Johannes, but may in fact have originated as a version of the French word honneurs (honours).

A player may only make the minimum overcall - for example Zwei Hannes directly over Dapp is not possible. A player whose bid has been overcalled may 'hold' the bid, retaining the right to play alone, by saying 'selber' if satisfying the requirements for the higher bid. For example the dapper can only hold Ein Hannes if also holding at least one king, and if the overcaller goes on to bid Zwei Hannes the first bidder would need the other two kings to hold this. It is also conceivable, though unlikely, that after a bid of Ein Hannes, held or not, a third player holding two kings might overcall with Zwei Hannes, which in principle could be held by the first overcaller if possessing two kings. Geiß, which can only be bid after Zwei Hannes, cannot be held as there is only one trump 1.

If the final bid was anything other than Solo the last player who bid or held becomes the lone player, picks up the Dapp and discards 12 cards. As usual 5-point cards (which include the cards required for the Hannes and Geiß bids), cannot be discarded.

The play is as in Breitnau, without gstiesieren but with an extra restriction in the first three tricks.

  • In the first trick the holder of the Gstieß must play it, and all other players must play a 1-point trump (2-20) if they have any.
  • In the second trick the holder of the Mund (21) must play it, and all other players must play a 1-point trump (2-20) if they have any.
  • In the third trick the holder of the Geiß (1) must play it, and all other players must play trumps,if they have any.

During the first three tricks, a player who has no trump to play may play any empty (1-point) suit card, or failing that any suit card. For example if the holder of the 21 or 1 runs out of other trumps before the scheduled trick, they play suit cards, keeping the 21 or 1 until the trick in which it must be played.

The payment calculation is the same as in Breitnau, but with the following factors:

  • Solo: ×1 if the lone player wins, ×2 if the lone player loses
  • Strecken: ×2
  • Dappen: ×1
  • Ein Hannes (bid or held): ×2
  • Zwei Hannes (bid or held): ×3
  • Geiß: ×4

The lone player must play and score at the level of the final bid. It is not possible, for example, for a player who bid Dappen to unilaterally increase the level to Ein Hannes for a higher multiplier if there was no other bidder.

Note: The requirement to play the 5-point trumps in the first three tricks corresponds to the rules of play for geregelter Räuber in Cego and Dreierles.

Other Black Forest variants

Achim Laber continues the search for other places where Dappen is or was played, and has some collected further partial descriptions from some former players.

Alois Schuler recalls that Dappen used to be played in Schollach. The game was for six players only: if there were seven at the table the dealer would sit out. There are the games Solo, Dappen and Strecken (against Dappen), but no Stupfen. Gstiesieren was allowed, as in Furtwangen, but there were no Ultis.

Hubert Vogelbacher, the landlord of Café Feldbergblick in Schwärzenbach, reports that Dappen used to be played there by six or seven players, with Gstiesieren allowed. The players have since died and no further details are available.

Sabine Abele-Hipp reports that Dappen used to be played at Haslach in the Kinzig valley. An elderly Cego player of her acquaintance had seen it played but did not play himself, and was unable to give any details of the rules.

Possible variant: Mainz Carneval Tarot

Thierry Depaulis discovered a neatly handwritten description in French of a 'Jeu du Tarot' played with 54 cards, written on the two sides of a sheet wrapped around a 78-card Tarot pack produced by the cardmaker Frommann between around 1840 and 1880. The trump 1 bears the inscription "Mainzer Carneval 1839". These rules were published in A History of Games Played with the Tarot Pack by Dummett and McLeod (2004) as game 5.7. Unfortunately they are incomplete, but have enough detail to indicate that this was probably an early relative of Dappen played in Alsace.

The Gstieß is called 'Squies' (pronounced "skees") or 'Excuse' (as in the French Tarot). The cards have the same values as above, but are counted in packets of 3, subtracting 2 points from the total of each packet. The total value of the cards in the pack is therefore 70. The lone player needs to take at least 35 points plus one card to win, the opposing team need at least 35 points in their tricks. The game value is the difference between the losers' card point total and 35 divided by 5 ignoring the remainder, plus 1. In other words the game value is 1 game point if the losers have 31-35 card points, 2 game points if they have 26-30, 3 game points if they have 21-25 and so on.

There can be from 3 to 7 players, and the deal is

  • for 3 players: 16 cards each and 6 to the 'Écart' (the face down cards equivalent to the dapp or talon which can be taken by the lone player)
  • for 4 players: 12 cards each and 6 to the Écart
  • for 5 players: 9 cards each and 9 to the Écart
  • for 6 players: 7 cards each and 12 to the Écart
  • for 7players: 6 cards each and 12 to the Écart

The description states that in a 3-6 player game "honneurs" (honours) may not be discarded unless the player holds 4 of them, but that this restriction does not apply if there are 7 players. In tarot games the word 'honours' often refers to the seven 5-point cards, so ostensibly the rule says that with fewer than 7 players these cards can be discarded only by a player who has at least 4 of them. Another possibility is that in this game the 'honours' are just the four kings. In favour of this interpretation, the word 'Hannes' used for kings in Buchenbach Dappen could be perhaps a corruption of 'honneurs'. A similar rule that kings can only be discarded by a player who has all four of them is also found in some versions of the related Swiss game Troggu.

No information is given about the bidding or the rules of play, but it is clear from the scoring that there are two teams, and from the discard rules that the Écart must be picked up by a player and cards discarded. From this and the fact that the dealing plan for 6 or 7 players is exactly the same as in modern Dappen, we can assume that there must be at least one round of bidding in which a player can volunteer to play alone after drawing the Écart cards and discarding. It is possible that a higher Solo bid without exchanging was also available as in many other Tarot games though there is no mention of this.

It is clear from the rules that the Squies was the highest trump, and it is reasonable to assume that the rules of play were to follow suit and to trump if unable to as in most other tarot games. We have no way to know whether a player holding the Squies alone was allowed to withhold it. There is no mention of any equivalent of Ulti.

History

References are given in [square brackets] - see the references section for further details.

Origin of Tappen and relation to Tarot games played elsewhere

Although Dappen has clearly been played in the Black Forest for a long time, probably since the late 18th century, it was first described and made known in 2024 by Achim Laber on his website cego.de.

For the location of Dappen within the history of Tarot games two features are particularly important:

  1. the game format in which one player volunteers to play against a large team of all the other players with the support of a large talon (Dapp);
  2. the 'Gstiesieren' rule found in some versions where although the Gstieß (or Fool) normally ranks as the highest trump (22) it can be withheld when the holder has no other trumps and then loses its trick-taking power.

These two rules are also found in the version of Tarock played in the eastern (German-speaking) part of canton Wallis in Switzerland (see Troggu). It is fairly clear that the rule on withholding the Fool (item 2 above) represents a transitional stage between the original use of the Fool as an excuse card that could be played to any trick but had no power and its modern use as the highest trump. Since it is highly unlikely that this exact rule would have been invented independently in two places, there must be some historic connection between the Wallis game and Badenese Dappen. A further affinity between these games is that both are for a relatively large group of players (usually 5-7 in Wallis and 6-7 in Baden) with a large talon and a single player playing against the rest.

Tarock was played in Alsace from around 1680 [Depaulis 2023, p. 163ff], and so far as we know it first arrived in Germany some time after 1720 [Depaulis 2010]. It was initially played in Baden and Vorderösterreich (later South Baden) [Depaulis 2010], but quickly became popular and spread throughout Germany from 1730. Grosstarock in particular, a 78-card game for three players each playing for themselves, in which the Fool had its traditional role as an excuse card, was described in many German game books from the mid-18th century onwards [see Alscher, RTS for the earliest description]. However this form of the game died out in Germany in the early 20th century and now survives only in Denmark.

From the early 19th century Tarot games in which the Fool (Gstieß) is used simply as the highest trump (22) appeared in central Europe and soon became dominant throughout the Austrian Empire, supplanting the older types of game in which the Fool was played as excuse. The existence of a few 18th century Italian-suited Tarot packs made in Rouen and Brussels and labelled 'Cartes de Suisse' in which the Fool has the Roman number XXII suggests that the Fool may have started to acquire its new role as early as the 18th century in some places. In any case it seems likely that games like Dappen and Swiss Troggu survive from a time of transition from the old to the new use of the Fool, probably in the late 18th century.

It is unclear why there should be such a close relationship between games now found only in Baden and Wallis. One possible explanation is that these are survivors of a type of game formerly played over a wide area including these regions. Another likely relative is the Mainz Carneval Tarot from Alsace (described above), which may be the same as or similar to the game played in the 19th century in Strasbourg by the Société des Tappeurs [Depaulis 2023, pp. 179-182]. Thierry Depaulis quotes a description by Louis Devrault of tarot players in Strabourg in 1828 or 1829 which mentions 'le fou, le plus fort des atouts' (the fool, the strongest of trumps) [Depaulis 2023, p. 181]. Another likely relative is La Tape, which was played in and around Fribourg in Switzerland until the 20th century. We have only partial information about this game [Dummett/McLeod 2009, game 15.23] but it is clear that the preferred form was for 6 players using 78 cards. There were also versions for 3-5 players in which low cards were removed from the deck. The Tape consisted only of 6 cards, which were picked up by the lone player. One report, in a 1956 newspaper article by Joseph Jordan, mentions that the Fool sometimes acquires the properties of the boer, the highest trump in Swiss Jass, which has the privilege that the holder cannot be forced to play it when holding no other trumps.

On the German edition of this page, Ulf Martin has suggested that Tappen may have been introduced to Baden from Catholic Switzerland (cantons of Fribourg in the Üechtland and Wallis) in the 18th century, when Walter Haas reports that young noblemen from the canton of Fribourg studied "in Austria" [Dummett/McLeod 2009, p14]. South Baden belonged to Habsburg Vorderösterreich ("Further Austria") until 1805. A natural place to study, given the transport conditions at the time, would have been the University of Fribourg in Breisgau, which had been set up especially for Catholic students.

Relation of Dappen to Cego and Dreierles

We know of four essentially different games now played in Baden using Cego cards. Three of them - Cego, Dappen and Dreierles - are true Tarot/Tarock games. The fourth, variously known as Strassenwart, Vier-Anderle or Cego-Zwick, is a gambling game related to Mauscheln and Zwicken, in which players are dealt 4-card hands and try to win at least one trick to avoid doubling the pot.

Cego is a type of Tarock known only in Baden featuring contracts in which the lone player must discard most or all of their original hand before taking cards from the talon (blind). It is popular in various forms throughout most of the Black Forest and in several nearby places - see maps at cego.de. The lesser known games Dreierles and Dappen are more closely related to traditional Tarot games in that the lone player picks up the blind before discarding. While 6-7 player Dappen is played only in the Upper Black Forest, Dreierles is a three-player game, quite similar to Austrian Tapp Tarock, played in the north of the region around Rastatt. The characteristic elements of today's Dreierles can already be found in the earliest description of Tapp Tarock from 1821 [Alscher, ATT; cf. Dummett/McLeod 2004, games 15.3 and 15.4]. It is possible that it was imported from Austria to the Rastatt area in the mid-19th century, Austrians were stationed in the federal fortress (Bundesfestung) there.

It is likely that Dappen is a direct descendant of the type of Tarock played in Baden in the early 19th century, and that Cego was a new Badenese invention from around that time that became so popular that it eclipsed its predecessors. It may be that Dappen was the form of Tarock played by soldiers from Baden when they were transferred to Spain in 1805. The basic elements of Cego (the cards, their values, the play of tricks, and the format of one playing against the rest) were already in place, including a large Dapp. All that would be needed to create the original form of Cego would be the idea of playing Dapp "blind", i.e. only picking up the Dapp after discarding cards from your hand. This could have been inspired by contact with the Spanish game Cascarella, as suggest by Dummett and McLeod [2004, p542-543]. This could account for the strongly held traditional belief among Cego players that their game originated in Spain.

There are significant differences between the versions of Cego played in different parts of Baden, and to some extent these mirror the differences between Dreierles and Dappen. In the Upper Black Forest, Cego players count cards in pairs, as in Dappen, for a total of 79 points in the pack. Elsewhere in Baden the cards are counted in packets of three for a total of 70 points, as in Dreierles. Some of the regional variations in Cego may be inherited from the different types of Tarot games that were previously played in those regions, but many of the shared features of these games as they are now played probably result from an influence of Cego on Dreierles and Dappen during the long period in which they have coexisted. Examples are the bidding format consisting of a Solo round followed by a round in which other contracts can be bid, the method of scoring where the difference in card points from the minimum is multiplied by a factor depending on the contract, the special rules by which in certain circumstances the Gstieß, 21 and 1 must be played to the first three tricks, and the introduction of the Ulti announcement, which is probably a 20th century innovation in both Cego and Dappen.

References

Literature

Illustrations

Adler Cego. © Altenburger Spielkarten.
Mainz Carnival 1839, scan: Achim Laber.

Resources

Ulf Martin's Dappen rule sheet (German PDF, 549 KB) can be printed as a foldable leaflet to be kept in the card box.

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This page is maintained by John McLeod, john@pagat.com   © John McLeod, 2024. Last updated: 18th November 2024

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