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Tarot Card Games

Trick-Taking Card Games

Tarot card games are a family of trick-taking card games played with a tarot deck of numbered suit cards plus a separate permanent trump suit, historically called trionfi or atouts, that outranks every suit card regardless of the suit led. The games developed in Italy in the early to mid fifteenth century as the original purpose of the tarot card deck, well before the deck's later and separate use for cartomancy and fortune telling, and regional descendant games are still actively played today, most notably French Tarot in France and Tarock in parts of Central Europe, each with its own established rules and competitive scene.

Facts
Partially Attested
Governing Body
Fédération Française de Tarot 2
Governs the French Tarot variant specifically; the tarot card game family overall has no single universal governing body, since other regional variants such as Tarock have their own separate national bodies.
Origin Year
1420 1
Originating Region
Northern Italy 1
Game Type
Trick-taking card game with a permanent trump suit 1
Sport
Game Type (category)
Card Game 1
Game Type (category)
Trick-Taking Game 1
Connections

Associated With

Skat, Games

Skat development at Altenburg between 1810 and 1817 combined the local game Schafkopf with borrowed features of Tarock and L Hombre; specifically, the practice of setting aside a hidden widow of cards, the skat itself, was adapted from the Tarot-family game Grosstarock, tying Skat to the tarot card game tradition alongside its primary Schafkopf ancestry.

Source The Oxford Guide to Card Games
In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Tarot card games - Wikipedia
  • History section, first sentence
    The earliest known example of a fifth suit of trumps was ordered by Filippo Maria Visconti around 1420 and included 16 trumps with images of Greek and Roman gods.
  • History section, footnote
    The Tarot pack was invented in northern Italy in about 1425
  • History section, paragraph 1, second sentence
    Trump cards, initially called trionfi, first appeared with the advent of tarot cards, in which there is a separate, permanent trump suit comprising a number of picture cards.
View the Source
2. French tarot - Wikipedia
History section
Quote, History section
In 1973, the French Tarot Federation (Fédération Française de Tarot) was formed and, by the late 20th century, Tarot had become the second-most popular card game in France, only trailing Belote.
View the Source
The Oxford Guide to Card Games
Oxford University Press, 1990Associated With: Skat

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