Trappola

Trappola is a trick-taking card game from early 16th-century Venice that spread across most of Central Europe and survived under names such as Trapulka, Bulka and Hundertspiel until perhaps the middle of the 20th century. Girolamo Cardano recorded it as current in Venice as early as 1524 and probably invented there, and his 1564 Liber de Ludo Aleae holds the earliest surviving rules. The original Venetian game was for two players, without trumps or bidding, and is the earliest known trick-taking game in which the ace ranks above the king. It used a special 36-card pack of Italian suits (swords, batons, cups and coins) that lacks the numerals from three to six. Players could declare three or four aces, kings, cavaliers, jacks or deuces for points, and suit had to be followed in each trick. In the eighteenth century Central Europeans added versions for three or four players, partnerships, trumps and bidding, including Hundertspiel. The last packs were made in Prague in 1944, Piatnik reprinted a pack in 1988, and the Greek word for a deck of playing cards derives from the game's name.