Mariage (card game)

Mariage is a historic trick-and-draw card game for two players, each holding a hand of six cards, in which a player scores bonus points for holding the king and queen of one suit, the marriage that gives the game its name. It was first documented in 1715 in a ladies' encyclopaedia printed in Leipzig, where the bonus pair was a king and an Ober, and it was popular across Central Europe, where the Polish version was known as mariasz. Eighteenth century rules added an amour bonus for the ace and ten of trumps, and nineteenth century play added the right to close the stock. The game spawned many offshoots, among them sixty-six, Schnapsen and 1000, and it gave its name to the whole marriage group of card games. Sixty-six first appears in 1860 as a variant beside it and had replaced it by the early twentieth century, the last effective mention of Mariage dating from 1905.