Illustrated Tarock

Illustrated Tarock is an Austrian trick-taking card game for three players, often described by tarock historians as the finest and most demanding of the three-handed Tarock games played with the 54-card pack. It belongs to the wider family of Central European tarock games rooted in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, a region sometimes nicknamed Tarockania for the strength and variety of its tarot-derived card traditions. The deck comprises 22 numbered tarocks that serve as permanent trumps alongside 32 suit cards in the French suits, and play proceeds counter-clockwise around the table. Although some card game scholars had assumed the game extinct, Viennese players confirmed during a 2009 call-in segment on an Austrian radio program that Illustrated Tarock was still actively played. Its rules have been documented in several successive versions, starting from a simplified 1954 ruleset and passing through more complex mid-twentieth-century variants before a streamlined modern edition was published in 2016. The game is recommended for players aged fourteen and up given the depth of its bidding and trick-taking strategy.