Playcard games

French tarot: questions and answers

Short answers to the questions people ask most about French tarot. Everything else is in the full rules.

What cards are in a French tarot pack?
Seventy-eight: four suits of fourteen — ace to ten, then jack, knight, queen and king — plus twenty-one numbered trumps and the Excuse. The trumps always beat the suits, and the 21 is the highest card in the game.
What are the oudlers?
The trump 1 (the petit), the trump 21 and the Excuse. They are worth 4.5 points each, but what really matters is how many the taker ends up with, because that sets the number of points they need. In French they are called the bouts.
How many points does the taker need?
It depends on the oudlers in their tricks at the end: 56 with none, 51 with one, 41 with two and 36 with all three. There are 91 points in the pack, so with three oudlers the taker needs well under half of them.
How are the cards counted?
Each oudler and each king is worth 4.5, a queen 3.5, a knight 2.5, a jack 1.5 and every other card 0.5. The total is 91. The half points are why players traditionally count cards in pairs, a high card with a low one.
What do the bids mean?
In rising order: petite, garde, garde sans le chien and garde contre le chien. They multiply what the hand pays by 1, 2, 4 and 6. With a petite or a garde the taker picks up the chien and puts the same number of cards back; with a garde sans the chien counts for the taker unseen, and with a garde contre it goes to the defenders.
How is a hand of French tarot scored?
Twenty-five points plus the difference between what the taker took and what they needed, multiplied by the bid. Each defender pays that amount to the taker if the contract is made, and receives it if it fails. A garde made by 6 points is (25 + 6) × 2 = 62 from each defender.
What does the Excuse do?
It lets you skip one trick. It is not a trump and never wins, but you may play it at any time, even when you could follow suit, and you keep it: it goes back to your own pile and you give the winner a half-point card in exchange.
Can French tarot be played by three or five players?
Four is the standard game and five is very popular: each player gets fifteen cards, the chien is three, and the taker calls a king before seeing it. Whoever holds that king is their secret partner. Three players is also played at home, with twenty-four cards each; the table here seats four or five.