Preferans

Preferans, also called Russian Preference, is a 10-card plain-trick game with bidding, played by three or four players with a 32-card Piquet deck. It is a sophisticated variant of the Austrian game Preference, which in turn descends from Spanish Ombre and French Boston, and it is renowned in the card game world for its many complicated rules and its insistence on strategic approaches. It has been popular in Russia since approximately the 1830s and quickly became the national card game there, although Durak has since taken that role. Greek Prefa is an earlier form of the Russian game, and the Russian game is distinguished by a greater number of possible contracts and by the relatively independent roles of the soloist and the opponents.