Zwikken

Zwikken is a plain-trick gambling card game of French origin that became established in the Netherlands, sometimes called Dutch Gleek in English, played by three to six players with a 32-card Jass pack of French-suited cards. Described as an old soldiers' game, Zwikken centers on winning tricks and accumulating points from a shared pot, with players betting on their ability to take at least two of three tricks in a round or to score the most points within a single trick. Card values follow a simple scale in which the ace counts 4, the king 3, the queen 2, the jack 1, and the ten counts nothing, and a further distinctive feature of the game is the zwik, a combination of three cards of the same rank that carries its own scoring significance within a hand. The game may be related to the German game Tippen, and its rules have shifted considerably from the versions recorded in the mid-nineteenth century to the forms played in the twenty-first century, reflecting a long informal oral tradition rather than a single fixed rulebook. Notably, playing Zwikken in public remains illegal in the Netherlands, a legal detail that marks the game's history as a gambling pastime rather than a purely recreational card game.