Dreierles is a three-handed, trick-taking Tarot card game that is popular in the German region of central Baden. It is very old and appears to be a south German cousin of Tapp Tarock, the oldest known 54-card Tarot game. Dreierles is played with Cego cards - the only surviving German Tarot cards still produced. German soldiers fighting with Napoleon almost certainly introduced a Spanish modification to Dreierles that produced Baden's national game of Cego. Its relative simplicity makes it a good introduction to games of the central European Tarot family, usually called Tarock games.
Name
The origin of the name Dreierles and its alternatives, Dreierle and Dreier, is in its lowest contract, Dreier ("three-er"), which involves picking up three of the six cards in the blind (Blinder) and discarding three to one side.
Another name for the game is Stroßewartscego (Straßenwartscego, literally "Roadworkers' Cego"), the name implying that it is played as a substitute for Cego when a fourth player cannot be found; however, it is quite a different game from Cego. Stroßewartscego should not be confused with another regional game, Strassenwart or Vier-Anderle, which is also played with Cego cards but is not a true Tarock game.
History
The earliest record for this game dates to 1917 when, as Dreierle, it is mentioned in a poem in a Baden trade journal alongside Skat and Jassen. And during the Second World War, a tribute to a 75-year old railwayman says that, although he's having to look after the farms of his two sons who have gone to war, he is still able to enjoy his favourite pastime, Dreierlespiel. A 1951 article that assumes Dreierles is a simplified 20th-century variant of Cego and confirms that it was played in the 1920s. However, Michael Dummett pointed out that Dreierles almost certainly pre-dates Cego and that the latter was derived from the former. This explains the popular but misleading story that Cego was Spanish and brought home sometime after 1812 by Baden soldiers fighting for Napoleon in Spain. Martin and McLeod believe it is almost certain that, in fact, Cego was created from Dreierles when a major modification in the use of the blind was imported from a Spanish version of Ombre called Cascarela, and that this accounts for the story that Cego was brought to Baden by Napoleonic soldiers after 1812. This is also consistent with the fact that, if one strips out features that appear to have been borrowed from Skat, the rules of Dreierles are very close to the earliest known ones for Tapp Tarock, hitherto considered the progenitor of all 54-card Tarock games. Dreierles could therefore have been common in Baden before 1812 and may even be the direct ancestor of Tapp Tarock itself.
Distribution
Baden is the only region of Germany where Tarock games are still played today. Dreierles is the less common of the two games played here, however, in central Baden around Rastatt, Cego cards are only used for playing Dreierles, while Cego itself is played in south Baden, south of the River Acher. In recent years, Dreierles tournaments have been held in Bühlertal, Iffezheim, Steinmauern, and Ottersdorf, all in the county of Rastatt, as well as in Achern in the county of Ortenau. The game is also known in Malsch near Karlsruhe and east of Rastatt.
Cards
Dreierles is played with a 54-card Cego pack. There are two quite different patterns of Cego cards available today, both available online: one is an Animal Tarot pack, known as the Adler Cego pattern, and the other is a Bourgeois Tarot design, sometimes called the Black Forest Cego, the main difference being in the design of the Tarot, or trump, cards themselves (see illustration).
Both patterns have 22 trumps; all bar one numbered with Arabic numerals. The highest is the unnumbered Fool, called the Stiess (pronounced "shteess") or Gstiess, and the rest rank in numerical order from 21 (highest) to 1 (lowest). An individual trump is called a Trock, Drock or Druck in the Baden dialect. The Stiess, the 21 and the 1 are collectively called the Droll or Drull. In the plain suits there are 32 cards ranking from high to low as follows:
and : King, Queen, Cavalier, Jack, Ace, 2, 3, 4
and : King, Queen, Cavalier, Jack, 10, 9, 8, 7
Rules
McLeod states that the rules of Dreierles are simpler than those of comparable Tarock games and that it is therefore a good introduction to the family.
