Chratze

Chratze is a trick-taking card game of the Rams family played mainly in German-speaking Switzerland and in Bavaria, its name coming from the German word for raking. It uses a standard thirty-six card deck in Swiss-German or French suits, and although it is counted among more than seventy variants of the Swiss Jass tradition, its scoring differs from most Jass games because cards carry no point value and only the number of tricks won decides a hand. Ideally four or five players sit down, though anywhere from two to seven can play, each dealt four cards for four tricks per round; an auction decides who becomes the declarer, called the Chratzer, and players may exchange cards before play begins. The Chratzer must take at least two of the four tricks to succeed, while the other players need only one, and the pot built from players' small antes is split two-thirds to a successful Chratzer and one-third among any other players who also won a trick, with unsuccessful players paying a penalty into the next round's pot. The game is closely related to the Austrian game Kratzen and to the Bavarian three-card variant known as Zwicken.