Description

A 32 card pack is used, consisting of A, K, Q, J, 10, 9, 8, 7 in each of the four suits, but when playing the game the four jacks are regarded as forming a separate trump suit. So there are effectively five suits: jacks (trumps), clubs, spades, hearts, diamonds.

The ranking of the trumps from high to low is: jack of clubs, jack of spades, jack of Hearts, jack of Diamonds.

In the four non-trump suits the cards rank from high to low A, 10, K, Q, 9, 8, 7.

Certain cards carry penalty points, and the object of the game is to avoid taking tricks containing those cards. First, all the cards carry their normal penalty point values as in Ramsch:

Jacks 2
Aces 11
Tens 10
Kings 4
Queens 3

Taking queens in tricks has an additional effect. The club, spade and heart queens carry extra special penalties which swamp the normal card points above, but these can be neutralised by taking the diamond queen:

Queen of clubs 300 points
Queen of spades 200 points
Queen of hearts 100 points
Queen of diamonds cancels all special queen penalties for the player who wins it in a trick

Nines, eights and sevens are neutral - the carry no penalty and have no special effect.

The player to dealer's left leads. Players must follow suit if they can. A player who has no card of the suit led can play any card.

Jacks count as belonging to the trump suit, not as members of the suits printed on them. This means that if a jack is led the other players must follow with a jack if they can.

[Rules paraphrased from Pagat.com entry.]