Doppelkopf as it was played in the shadow of Altgeld Hall
Table of contents
Doppelkopf is a popular German card game. Among Germans it is second in
popularity only to Skat, but that probably depends on who you ask.
It is a version of the game Schafskopf (german for sheepshead).
That's were the name comes from:
Doppelkopf (german for double head) is played with two decks, instead
of one as is customary for both Skat and Schafskopf.
A bit of history: Schafskopf is the oldest of the 3 games and dates back
to the 1700's when it was developed by ... shepherds.
Skat is the youngest and dates back to 1810 and has been codified in 1886 by
the German Skatcongress to unify the rules in the "Deutsche Skatordnung"
which are still being monitored and modified every now and then.
This is one thing were Doppelkopf and Schafskopf differ greatly from Skat:
There are many local rules, since there is no standard. This has the advantage
that there is a lot of variety whereever you go.
Doppelkopf is usually played with 2 decks of 24
cards. Each deck consists of 6 cards (ace, king, queen, jack, 10 and 9)
in 4 suits (clubs, spades, hearts and
diamonds). In some places they play without the 9's though, resulting
in 2 decks of 20 cards.
| Symbol | Abbreviation | Suit | Farbe |
|---|
 | c | Clubs | Kreuz |
 | s | Spades | Pik/Schippen |
 | h | Hearts | Herz |
 | d | Diamonds | Karo |
Another thing is the actual deck that is being used. While you can certainly play
with the anglo-american "poker / bridge" decks (52 cards), the game has more of the typical flair
if you use german decks (with Ober and Unter / 32 cards) like they do it in
parts of southern Germany or a french deck
(32 cards: A K D B 10 9 8 7 in 4 suits) like we do where I grew up and also
in our local game.
| Symbol | Abbreviation | English | German | Value |
|---|
| A | A | Ace | As | 11 |
| 10 | 10 | Ten | Zehn | 10 |
| K | K | King | König | 4 |
| D | Q | Queen | Dame | 3 |
| B | J | Jack | Bube/Bauer | 2 |
| 9 | 9 | Nine | Neun | 0 |
Doppelkopf (frequently abbreviated as Doko) is usually played with 4 players.
You can also play it with 5 players in which case the dealer sits out. For the
case that there are 6 of you we invented Triplekopf. If
you have 7 people naturally you can play Triplekopf with the dealer sitting out.
So as long as you have at least 4 people you can play! If you want to keep
scores, then at the beginning of the session the participant with the best
arithmetic skills/ most honest participant is chosen to be the score
keeper. If, like us, you don't have any of these then the host can keep score.
How long you play is up to you. We usually just stop when we want to go home.
If you feel that in that case the person that is ahead after the first game
will want
to go home, then just play until a certain score is achieved or until
everybody has dealt a fixed number of times. We usually play one or two
rounds of forced solos and make sure that everybody
dealt equally often.
Each card in the deck has a certain value: The A is worth
11 points, the 10 10 points, the K 4, the Q 3, the J 2 and the 9 0 points. This
adds up to 240 points in both decks altogether. The goal of you (and your partner) is to capture at
least half of those points in order to win the hand. The more decisive the
victory the better it is, and you will get many points on the score sheet if you
win a game by a big margin and maybe even announce beforehand that you will do
so.
To make matters a little more interesting Doko has trumps, lots of them:
26 of the 48 cards in the deck are trump and here is their order from highest
to lowest together with the customary nicknames:
- 10
- Queen The Old ones / Die Alten
- Queen
- Queen
- Queen
- Jack The Charlies
- Jack
- Jack
- Jack
- Ace The Foxes / Die Füchse
- 10
- K
- 9
Hence a Qs beats a Qh and a Jc, so pretty much everything, while the
high counting 10d and the foxes hardly beat any other trumps at all. In the
Offsuits (clubs, spades and hearts) the cards rank in order of their point
value: The Aces are highest, followed by 10, K and 9. Recall: The 10h is a
trump, the highest one. I don't know of many Doko players who have not at
least once mistaken the 10h for a regular heart and then done something
stupid.
When a card of a certain suit (hearts, spades, clubs or trump) is led, then
you have to follow that suit. If you don't have that suit you can put
whatever you want. The person that put down the highest card in the suit
that was led takes the trick, unless somebody put down a trump in which
case the highest trump card takes the trick. If two people put down exactly
the same card, then the card that was put down first is higher. The person
that took the
previous trick always leads for the next trick and the other players
put down their card in a clockwise order starting with the player to
his left.
Everything in Doko is done in a clockwise direction, and whenever I refer to
a player as being the one closest to another player I always refer to the
player sitting closest to him in a clockwise direction to which the situation
applies. Usually that is the player immediately to his left.
The duty of dealing moves after each hand to the dealers left neighbor.
After the dealer has shuffled the deck the player to his right cuts
the deck and the dealer gives each of the 4 participants 12 of the 48 cards
in some random order starting with the player to his left and proceeding
clockwise.
After the cards are dealt, the players are first asked if they have any
announcements to make, since a "few" special situations can occur that have
to be dealt with prior to the game.
- First of all if any player has five 9's
he can (but doesn't have to) call a misdeal. In that case the current dealer
deals a new hand.
- Second of all, if someone feels strong enough he can play
a Solo against the three other players. If several players
have Solos then the player closest to the dealer gets to call his Solo.
That is everyone, in a clockwise manner, starting with the player to
the left of the dealer gets asked if they want to play a Solo. You are only
asked once though. Once you say no your chance is gone.
- If that is not the case either, then everyone with very few trumps can
call a Poverty.
- And finally if somebody has two Qc's, that person can call for
a Marriage.
- If none of these special situations occur
you are ready to play the regular game:
One of the fun things about Doppelkopf is that you usually don't know
initially who is your partner:
The two players with the Old ones form the Re party and the other two players
the Contra party. And then Re plays against Contra. This can of course be
somewhat confusing, but usually the dust settles pretty quickly when the
first Old One falls and everybody knows that that player is Re.
Then everyone starts paying attention what everybody else plays until it
is obvious who plays with whom.
At the end of the game both partners from the same party add their points
together and Re wins if they get at least 121 points.
Doko is a zero sum game, which means that the loser gets as many points
taken off as the winner gets added. However we don't like that too much,
since somebody will end up with a negative score at the end. Hence we
decided that in our local game we only give positive points for the winner:
| Points for Re | 0 | 1-29 | 30-59 | 60-89 | 90-119 | 120 | 121-150 | 151-180 | 181-210 | 211-239 | 240 |
|---|
| Score for Re | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Score Contra | 6 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| English | Black | No 30* | No 60* | No 90* | No 120* | * | No 120 | No 90 | No 60 | No 30 | Black |
| German | Schwarz | Keine 30* | Keine 60* | Keine 90* | Keine 120* | * | Keine 120 | Keine 90 | Keine 60 | Keine 30 | Schwarz |
Here * stands for "against the Old ones/Gegen die Alten". As you can see the table is not quite symmetric.
You get an extra point if you keep the Old ones from winning. This is not the only way of getting extra points
though. Notice that your team gets these points independent of who wins the game. Here they are in order of
likelihood of occuring:
Catching a fox: If one team takes a fox from another team
-- you don't get points for saving your partners fox -- that gives the stealing
team an extra point. This is usually very annoying if it happens to you. So you
would think that when you are holding both foxes you are in big trouble. To make
the game a little more fun though, you can turn the 2 foxes turn into a PIG
(Schweinchen / Schwein / Sau) if you have both of them. To do so you MUST say
that you have a pig when you put down the first ace of diamonds. What this means
now, is that they turn into the HIGHEST trumps. So they can even beat a 10h
(ouch!) and become uncatchable. If you forget or choose not to announce a pig
(reasonable in a Lumper) then they are still two foxes and can be caught.
Charlie: When you take the very last trick of a hand with the
Charlie (Jc), your team gets an extra point. Stealing a Charlie on the other hand
doesn't do anything for you.
Full Trick: If you take a trick that involves only Full cards
(10's and A's) your team also gets an extra point.
Note that it is possible to make more than one extra point on a given trick.
It is also important that both sides (not only the winners) can get extra points
in a single game, so that sometimes the extra points can outweigh the value
of the game itself and turn the losing party into the one that gets more
points on the score sheet. To indicate that you made an extra
point one card is turned over on your stack of tricks for each extra point:
The caught Fox, the Charlie or one of the Full cards
depending on what kind of an extra point it was.
Sometimes a player has a very lopsided hand with lots of aces and other useful
cards. When that is the case it might be a good idea to play a solo which means
that you play against all three other players all by yourself. That is not an
impossible task, but it requires some skill and good cards help too. To make
it a little easier you get the lead for the first trick no matter where you sit.
In our game the solo player has an abundance of Solos to choose from:
- (Regular) Trump Solo: If you have lots of quality trumps
(maybe even the pig) and are void or have aces in offsuits you can consider to
take on the three other players in a regular game. Not an easy task.
- Queen Solo: In this Solo only Queens, in their usual order,
are trump with the cards in the 4 suits being in the Order A 10 K J 9.
- Jack Solo: Similarly here only Jacks are trump with the cards
in the 4 suits being in the order A 10 K Q 9.
- Suit Solo: You can pick your favorite among the 4 suits and
make only the cards in that suit trump. In each suit (also in trump) the cards
are in the order A 10 K Q J 9.
- No Trump Solo/Fleischloser: In this game there are no trumps
whatsoever. It is really easy to get hammered in this one if you don't play
carefully.
- Lumper: If your hand is truly awful this might be the solution. In a lumper you try not to take any trick at all. Trumps are as in a regular
game and only the number of tricks taken by the solo player matter, points don't.
Scoring: Naturally in a solo the solo player is the Re and
the other three guys are the Contra party. The only solos where Charlies and
foxes are worth extra points is in a Regular Solo, but Full tricks are OK
unless you play a lumper. Also the scoring itself is a little different:
- For Nonlumper games you first determine by how many you won, then if you
played against (against the solo player that is) you double the score instead
of just adding one, next you triple that to make matters really expensive and
finally you add in the extra points.
For example if on a Trump solo Re only scored 87pts and got one of his Foxes
stolen but made the last trick with a Charlie the scoring would be as follows:
No 120, no 90 [=2], lost (the solo player, that is/ so x2)[=4] times 3 (the
solo multiplier)[=12] and a fox makes a total of lucky 13 for the Contra party.
Re would still get a point for his Charlie though.
If the result happens to
be 120 points for both parties, then it is treated like 121 points for Contra.
- For Lumpers it is a little different, with Re scoring 3 points if Re
doesn't take a trick, but Contra scoring 6 pts each for each trick that Re takes.
Solos are an expensive matter, with the cost for losing being pretty high.
So don't play one unless you feel that you have a real high chance of winning
or you have to play for some other reason.
If nobody plays a solo and you have at most three trumps that are not foxes,
then you can declare a poverty/Armut. For that you take your trumps
and put them face down on the table, except for foxes
which must go face up. If you have a pig you have an option: Either you look
at it as a pig. In this case if you have at most one other trump it is still
a poverty and you put all trumps face down on the table. Or you can look at
it as a pair of foxes. In that case you may have up to 3 other trumps to still
be able to declare a poverty. You put the other trumps face down, both foxes
face up. The aces of diamonds stay foxes/pigs for the player who picks up the
hand.
Then the other players, starting with the one closest to the poverty
and proceeding in a clockwise direction, are asked if they want to pick
up the poverty.
If nobody wants to pick it up, which doesn't happen often, a regular
game is played. In that case two open foxes can be turned into pigs again.
Otherwise the "poor" player and his partner are the Re
party and a regular game is being played. The player who picked up the
poverty also gets to take the cards on the table and returns
the same amount of cards, with the only restriction being that he has
to announce whether or not he returned trumps.
Remarks: If you pick up a fox and already have one, then you have two
foxes and not a pig. It is also possible to have 2 poverties on one
hand. In that case the poverty closest to the dealer is offered first to the
player closest to him and then to the other player. After that the second
poverty is offered to the remaining player if the first poverty was taken.
If not BOTH are taken, then the game is a misdeal. Otherwise the first
poverty forms the Re and the second the Contra party and cards are exchanged
in the usual fashion.
If you have both of the Old Ones and noone declared a solo or a poverty
you have two options. Either you play a Silent Solo or you announce
a Marriage.
If you announce a Marriage, then you and the first player besides
yourself to take a trick on a NONTRUMP LEAD
form the Re party and the game proceeds as usual.
If you do not announce the Marriage, either because you opted not
to or because you were sleeping, then you are playing a Silent Solo.
This is a regular Trump Solo where you are the Re party, but nobody
knows that to begin with. This can be hard to win, just like a regular
Trump Solo, especially since you don't necessarily have the lead in the
first trick.
But you will probably have your opponents confused for a
while and that can make a big difference.
To make matters even more interesting everyone has to play a solo at
least every dozen or so games. That is at least once during each
Forced Solo Round.
A Forced Solo Round ends when every player has played a Solo.
If on the eleventh game of the round one or more players haven't
played their Solo yet and nobody announces a misdeal or a voluntary
Solo then among the players who haven't played their Solo yet the
one that sits closest to the dealer (starting with the player to his
left proceeding clockwise) is forced.
The forced player gets to announce what Solo he wants to play.
Of course he cannot play a Silent Solo, but everything else is OK.
Unlike in voluntary Solos Re doesn't necessarily get the lead, but
rather (like in a regular hand) the player to the left of the dealer
does. For that reason it can be a good idea to volunteer on a Solo
when you would have been forced anyhow.
Forced Solos can be quite brutal and result in many points for
Contra, since Re doesn't necessarily have a good hand and on top
of that the split can be bad. For that reason we recommend NOT to play
with Forced Solos if you are 5 players. The player sitting out
will not be part of the carnage, although all this really isn't his
fault. Also if you play with Forced Solos the likelihood of risky
Solos being played, in order to avoid being forced later, is bigger.
Again this discriminates against the dealer if he has to sit out.
If you have a particularly strong hand you can announce the team that
you are on, thus doubling the value of the game subject to the following rules:
- It is possible to have both Re and Contra being declared on one hand.
In this case the value of the game is quadrupled.
It is not possible however to have more than one Re and one Contra declaration
in any given hand.
- In a regular hand you can declare Re or Contra until you put down
your very first card. Customarily Re or Contra is declared when playing
your first card, but you can declare even before the first card
of the hand is played if you think it is advantageous.
- No Res or Contras on Marriages, Poverties or Forced Solos.
But Res and Contras can be announced on Solos that you volunteer for in
order to avoid being forced.
- On voluntary Solos (and this includes Silent Solos)
you can only declare Re if somebody else declares Contra first. In the
case of a Silent Solo you only get to declare Re if you happen to play
your first card AFTER Contra is declared. Otherwise you have the right
to declare the Re only as an immediate reply to a Contra.
- Extra points are never doubled/quadrupled. Instead they are added on
at the end of the multiplication. This is also true for the "Against the
old Ones" extra point.
Remark: In most other local games you can also announce No 90, No 60,
No 30, Black to raise the value of the game even further. Usually
this only happens when the outcome of the game is fairly
clear to begin with, thus just making an expensive game even more
expensive. We decided against this rule for that reason.
So finally what do you do when there are 6 of you? You play Triplekopf.
The rules are pretty much the same except for the following changes:
- Use three decks of 24 cards and deal every player 12 cards.
- Because of the bigger number of points in the deck it now takes 181 points
for Re to win. The increments of winning are still in steps of 30:
No 180, no 150, no 120, and so on.
- To declare a misdeal you need six 9's.
- No Forced Solos, but voluntary Solos are still declarable.
We even had people winning these against the 5 other players!
- The Re party consists of the three old ones.
- If a player has 3 old ones he declares a Grand Marriage. The
first 2 players that take tricks besides him on nontrump leads are
his partners and thus form Re.
- If a player has 2 old ones he declares a (Small) Marriage. The
other Qc and the first player to take a nontrump lead trick besides the
two Qc players are his partners and they form Re. The first player to take a
trick on a nontrump lead has to declare whether he has a Qc or not. That way
it is clear if the search for a partner is to be continued or not.
- Poverties work in a similar fashion and after the first player
picks up the poverty his other partner is again the first player not already
on the Re team to take a nontrump lead trick.
- If there are two poverties then first the poverty
closest to the dealer is offered to the player closest to him and to the next
player and so on. Whoever gets to pick it up will be on the Re team together
with the player who offered the poverty.
Then the same thing is done with the other poverty and these two players
will be on the Contra team. The first player, of the remaining two
to take a trick on ANY lead joins Re and the other Contra. If none
of them ever picks up such a trick (which is quite possible since 2 players
are now loaded with trumps), then they don't get any points (neither on the
Re nor on the Contra side).
If not both poverties are picked up, then the hand is redealt.
- Three poverties are also a misdeal.
- Two foxes form a piglet, ranking right between the J's and Q's on the
ranking of trumps and you don't get extrapoints for catching them, but
remember if
you don't announce that you have a piglet when you put down the first fox,
then they are still two foxes and thus catchable. If you have 3 foxes you
have a boar (corresponding to a regular pig and thus being uncatchable).
The boar also has to be announced when you put down the first one of the
three foxes otherwise they all stay foxes and thus catchable.