The rules
Everything below is the real game, the way it is played at kitchen tables from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok. Five minutes of reading. After that the deck teaches you, and the coach explains what it taught.
There is no winner in durak. There is only the one loser.The deal and the trump
Durak uses 36 cards, six through ace. Everyone gets six cards. The next card is turned face up under the deck: its suit is trump for the whole game, and that card is the last one anyone will draw.
Trump cards beat any card of any other suit. A six of trump beats an ace of anything else. Remember where the big trumps are; everyone else is trying to.
hearts are trump today
The attack
The player with the lowest trump attacks first, at the neighbour on their left. Lead any card. The defender must deal with it before anything else happens.
An attack is not one card for long. Any rank already on the table can be thrown in again by the attackers. Six sixes on the felt is a bad day.
same rank piles on
The defence
Beat every attacking card with a higher card of the same suit, or with any trump. Each attack gets its own answer, laid across it.
Beat everything and the whole pile goes to the discard, face down, gone. Fail once and you take every card on the table into your hand, and you skip your turn to attack.
The discard matters. Cards that leave never come back. The players who remember them win the endgame.
higher suit, or any trump
The transfer, in perevodnoy
The second variant adds one move. If you are attacked with a six and you hold a six, you can lay yours down and slide the whole attack to the next player. They can pass it on again. Somebody, eventually, has to actually play cards.
Podkidnoy is the first variant, the one most kitchens play: no transfers, just piling on. The app has both; pick per table.
same rank passes it left
Refill, run out,
do not be last
After every bout, everyone draws back up to six cards, attacker first, defender last, until the deck is gone. That face-up trump under the deck is the final card drawn.
Then hands start emptying. Play your last card and you are out, safe, done. The last player still holding cards is the durak. The fool shuffles and deals the next game. That is the whole punishment, and somehow it is enough.
out, safe
the durak
Words you will hear
- durak
- The fool. The one player still holding cards at the end. Also the name of the game, which tells you everything about its spirit.
- podkidnoy
- "Throw-in" durak. Attackers pile on any rank already on the table. The default at most kitchen tables.
- perevodnoy
- "Transfer" durak. Match the attacking rank to pass the whole attack to the next player.
- talon
- The face-down deck you draw from, with the trump card showing beneath it.
- ЖУЛИК
- The cheat. In cheat rooms sneaking cards is a legal move, and this stamp is what you get for being caught.