Tarot in Hungary is a slightly different animal than that found elsewhere, each game of the family progressing toward the eventual elimination of card points altogether whose role is usurped by that of scoring bonus points for achievements.
All the Tarokk games are for four players and they all employ The Fool as Tomfool, the highest trump in a shortened pack.
What I shall call Free Tarokk is the popular form, unregulated by any governing body. It has three main variations, Paskievics being the basic form of the game, while Palatine and Magus each provide additional tiers of bonuses.
Royal Tarokk, is a vast game that was created specifically for tournament play and is really unsuitable for the casual player as it requires an organised governing body to flourish. However, Emperor Tarokk was developed as a bridge between the two forms and so I have included a version of this for those players taken with the Hungarian game play.
As to which is the best form of the game, opinions are mixed. Some feel that the addition of more and more tiers of bonuses add to the complexity and sophistication of the game, while others find that they make play and the outcome increasingly random, pointing out that sophistication isn’t always found in complexity. Sadly, I do not have much experience with playing these games however, if only on instinct, I lean toward the later opinion. From what I can see, Paskievics is an excellent game that requires no elaboration to improve it.
Collectively, I refer to these next three games as Free Tarokk - as this form of the games has no ties to any governing body essential to tournament play - and the basic (or pure) form of the game is called Paskievics Tarokk. The other two versions are called Palatine and Magus Tarokk, each one adding an additional tier of bonuses to the game’s original six.
