Austrian-style 54-card Tarock hand: the Fool; six trumps; King, Queen, 1 of hearts. Note the lack of corner indices
Tarocchi, also known as tarock, is a trick-taking game, and one of the oldest card games known. It is played with a tarot deck of playing cards. The so-called "esoteric" decks used for divination are usually ill-suited for playing, for example the corner symbols are missing; thus there are regular playing decks in the countries where tarocchi is popular.
The 78-card deck contains:
- four suits: depending on the region, either the Anglo-French hearts, diamonds, spades and clubs or the original Latin suits of swords, batons, cups, and coins; numbered one through ten, plus four court cards—a page (or jack), a knight, a queen, and a king;
- the twenty-one tarots, known in divination as the Major Arcana, which function in the game as a permanent suit of trumps;
- the Fool, also known as the Excuse, an un-numbered card that in some variations excuses the player from following suit or playing a trump, and in other acts as the strongest trump.
After the hand has been played, a score is taken based on the point values of the cards in the tricks each player has managed to capture.
For the purpose of the rules, the numbering of the trumps are the only thing that matters.The symbolic tarot images customary in divinatory tarot have no effect in the game itself: though, rather ironically, the tarot deck was originally designed to play this game (see playing card history), the design traditions subsequently evolved independently and the tarots often bear only numbers and whimsical scenes arbitrarily chosen by the engraver. However there are still traditional sequences of images in which the common lineage is visible: for example, a moon is visible at the bottom left corner of the XXI in the picture at right. This stems from confusion of German Mond with Italian mondo, meaning "world"—the usual symbol associated with the 21 in divinatory tarot.
In tarot decks made for playing the game (as opposed to those made for divination or other esoteric uses), the four Latin suits are replaced in many regions with the French suits of hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades. Some variations of the game are played with a 54-card deck (5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 of hearts and diamonds and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 of spades and clubs are discarded).
French-style 78-card Tarot hand: seven trumps; King, Page, 6 of hearts; King, Knight, Page, 3, 1 of diamonds
Variations of the game are still played in France, Germany, Italy, Austria and Slovenia.
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