Lampeln

Lampeln, also spelled Lampln, is a traditional plain-trick card game from Bavaria and Austria that is still played in a handful of places today. It belongs to the Rams group of card games, a family defined by a distinctive mechanic that lets a player drop out of the current hand if they judge they cannot win any tricks, or cannot reach whatever minimum number of tricks the hand requires, rather than being forced to play on at a growing penalty. The game is historically associated with regions including Salzburg, Upper Austria, Upper Bavaria, Lower Bavaria and the Upper Palatinate, an area spanning both sides of the Austrian-Bavarian border. As with other Rams-group games, the option to drop out shapes the entire strategy of Lampeln, since players must weigh the risk of a weak hand against the cost of withdrawing early.