German card games

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. An Ace is an Ass yes, really! Is someone playing dirty in the game?

Want a glimpse of German game culture without leaving your couch? Check out these videos about fun and silly indoor games in Germany and distinctly German board games. Both videos are available on FluentU , which means you never have to worry about missing a word of the German dialogue. FluentU takes authentic videos—like music videos, movie trailers, news and inspiring talks—and turns them into personalized language learning lessons.

You can try FluentU for free for 2 weeks. Click here to check out the website or download the iOS app or Android app. FluentU videos also come with built-in flashcards and fun quizzes to help you remember the new words.

Check out a FluentU trial to explore the full video library and learn German the way native speakers actually use it. To play this game, you need a standard deck of 52 cards.

Start with 12 cards laid out face up in three rows of four. Four additional cards are placed face down on the table. You need to rearrange the cards at the top so that they run from Ace to King. Place the additional cards under the correct suits in order. Now draw a card from the deck and place it where it belongs, if possible.

German suited cards are still the primary type of cards used in many parts of central Europe. To some extent each country or region has its own variation of the pattern, with noticeably different designs.

The main places where German suited cards are now used are as follows please follow the links to the country pages for details of the games played. William Tell. The characters depicted on the kings, overs and unders are from the 15th century legend of Wilhelm Tell, who is supposed to have led the Swiss resistance against Austrian domination.

According to the legend, he was compelled to shoot an arrow through an apple placed on his son's head. Specifically, the characters are from the play about Wilhelm Tell written by Friedrich Schiller in The playing-cards with these characters became popular around the time of the revolutions of , probably because of the parallels with the uprisings against the Habsburg empire.

The cards are used mainly in Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia and Romania, but are unknown in Switzerland, even though the characters on them are Swiss. Games played with German suited cards The German suits of acorns , leaves , hearts and bells were established in the early fifteenth century. The goal of the game is to get rid of all your cards. The points you get for the cards are as follows:. If you end up with this card at the end, you get points! You lay down cards of the same suit and the player with the highest card takes the pile.

If you really want to get into the world of German card games, there are two words for you: Doppelkopf and Skat. Both of these popular games can be played for hours. There are many game clubs dedicated to both and they have their own tournaments throughout Germany as well as other German-speaking countries.

The game is played with 48 to 40 cards and is sometimes played with German-suited cards featuring Balls, Hearts, Leaves and Acorns rather than the standard French-suited cards most of us are used to. The rules for Doppelkopf are too complex to go through here, you can read them on this website.

The other granddaddy of German card games is definitely Skat. Skat is a game for three players and is played with a card deck, either French- or German-suit. The suits have different values, with Clubs or Acorns boasting the highest points, The rules for Skat are even more complex than Doppelkopf, but you can learn more on this website. Do you know the names of the suits in German?

If not, then here they are!