Trick-taking Game - Special Variations

Special Variations

Numerous further variations to the basic rules may occur, and only a few examples can be mentioned here:

• Certain games require the holder of a certain card value to play it as the lead to the first trick of a hand; Hearts, as commonly played in North America, requires the player holding the 2♣ to play it as the lead-off card. Variants of Pinochle sometimes require the first player to the left of the dealer that holds a dix (9♣) to lead off.
• There may be restrictions on leading certain suits; a common Hearts rule is that a player may not lead a Heart until at least one trick has had a Heart played off-suit to another trick. Spades has a similar but less-common variation regarding its trump suit.
• There are trick-taking games played with Domino tiles instead of playing cards. These include the Chinese Tien Gow and Texas 42.
• Many games are played with one or more stripped decks (a deck from which certain card values are removed). The most common stripped deck is a piquet deck, used for piquet, Belote, Skat, Euchre, Bezique and (with two piquet decks) Pinochle, among others. Rook's main variant, Kentucky Discard, uses the equivalent of a 52-card deck with all card values 2-4 removed. Most regional Tarot variants, especially Germanic and Italian variants like Tarock and Tarocco, use some subset of the "full" 78-card Tarot deck.
• In Bridge the partner of the contractor or declarer is called dummy and does not actively participate in the play; dummy's hand is instead laid on the table face-up after the opening lead, and declarer chooses the cards from dummy's hand to play during dummy's turns.