Trex (card game)

Trex is a four-player trick-taking compendium card game, meaning it is made up of several distinct games played in succession, that is primarily played across the Levant region, in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. It is played with a standard fifty-two card international deck with no jokers, over four rounds called kingdoms, each made up of five separate contracts; in each kingdom one player acts as the King and chooses which of the five contracts is played for that hand, so that by the end of all four kingdoms, after twenty total deals, every player has played each of the five contracts exactly once and the game ends. Four of the five contracts are trick-avoidance games in which players try to take as few tricks, or as few penalty cards, as possible, while the fifth contract, itself also called Trex, is a domino-style game in which players race to be the first to empty their hand of cards. Trex is often compared to other European trick-avoidance compendium games such as Barbu, Herzeln, Kein Stich and Quodlibet, which share its structure of combining several distinct scoring contracts into one larger match.