The Chouine card game, online, with a friend or the computer

What Chouine is, and where it comes from

Wikipedia calls Chouine a very old French card game, still played in the Loire Valley, especially in north Touraine. Pagat, John McLeod's rules site for card games, says its origins are said to date from the 16th century. Wikipedia's history says at least the 18th, and the reason is worth knowing: the older date leans on Rabelais naming a game called Mariage in 1534, and David Parlett points out that nothing is known of that game. We will not pick a year for you.

The word is older than the rules pages, and Wikipedia has the receipts. An 1849 dictionary of Norman dialect lists chouine as a term in the game of Briske, for holding the ace, king, queen, jack and ten of trumps. Zola, in his 1887 novel La Terre, has two men playing a rowdy game of La Chouine at Cloyes. The same article adds that the game appears to be a variant of Brisque or Briscan.

The game has had a revival: an annual Chouine world championship is held in Lavardin, a village in Loir-et-Cher, and Wikipedia dates them from 1974. Pagat's rules are based on Jacques Proust's Règle du jeu de la Chouine, and so are Wikipedia's; Proust's text was published by the association that looks after the château at Lavardin. Pagat files the game in its marriage group, beside Bezique, Marjolet and Pinochle: point-trick games that pay a bonus for a king and queen of one suit. McLeod, Wikipedia says, rates Chouine a good way into that family because its rules are relaxed.

The rule set we follow, and the places we chose

We follow Proust as Pagat sets it out: two of you, a 32-card deck, the piquet pack, seven up to ace, and a suit ranks ace, ten, king, queen, jack, nine, eight, seven. Some things are our decision rather than the book's, and you should know them before you sit down.

The quinte, five aces and tens in one hand, is worth 50 here. Proust, Wikipedia and Cats at Cards all say 50. Pagat says 100. We took the primary text. A full game in Proust is up to three manches, a manche being a run of parties agreed in advance. We play one manche only, best of three parties or best of five, and your host picks when the table is made. There is no deciding third manche.

Smaller choices, too. Proust has you draw a card to see who deals first, the lower card dealing; the server picks at random, and the deal alternates from there. The server shuffles, so nobody cuts. And two versions we do not deal at all: the adaptations for three or four people, which take three cards each and cut the combinations down, and the Mondoubleau variant, where nothing is turned up and a declaration on the lead names trumps.

How a partie runs: five cards, then two phases

One deal is a partie. You each get five cards. The next card goes face up and its suit is trumps; the other 21 lie face down on top of it as the talon. The non-dealer leads, the winner of each trick leads the next, and a trick is two cards. The higher card of the suit led wins. A trump beats a non-trump card. If the suits differ and neither is a trump, the card that led wins.

If you play Belote you will know the ranking and be thrown by what comes next. While the talon has cards in it, nobody has to follow suit or beat anything, which Proust himself sets against Belote and most other usual games. Throw whatever you like. The winner of each trick draws the top card of the talon, the loser draws the next, and you are both back at five. That sounds wrong to anyone raised on follow-suit games, and it changes what the early tricks are for. Winning a trick means little unless it holds something valuable, mostly a brisque, an ace or a ten, so Pagat's advice is to get rid of useless cards, the sevens, eights and nines of the non-trump suits especially, and collect combinations.

Trick eleven is where the last two cards are drawn. Its winner takes the final face-down card, its loser takes the turned-up trump, and the talon is gone. Now the second player to each trick has rules: follow suit if you can; if a trump was led, beat it with a higher trump if you hold one, or play a lower trump; and if you cannot follow a non-trump suit, you must trump when you hold a trump, which wins the trick. The leader is still free. Five tricks like that, sixteen in all, and the final one is worth ten points.

Declaring and scoring, with a worked partie

Points come from the cards you win and from combinations you declare. Aces are 11, tens 10, kings 4, queens 3, jacks 2, and nines, eights and sevens nothing. That is 120 in the pack, and ten more for taking the final trick, the dix de der, so 130 a partie before anyone declares.

To declare, you name the combination as you play one of its cards to a trick, leading or following, with all of its cards still in your hand. When the trick ends you show the rest and the points count at once. Declaring is optional, and a mariage can sit in your hand until the last few tricks. A mariage, king and queen of a suit, is 20, or 40 in trumps. A tierce, king, queen and jack, is 30 or 60. A quateron, ace and those three, is 40 or 80. A quinte is any five brisques, 50 here. A chouine, ace, ten, king, queen and jack of one suit, wins the partie outright.

You get one declaration in each suit a partie, and one quinte. So, a worked case, taken from Pagat. Hearts are trumps and you hold the king, queen and jack of hearts. You play the jack and say tierce in hearts, and once the trick is done you show the king and queen: 60 points, straight away. You still hold the king and queen, but hearts has had its declaration, so they can never be called a mariage. Holding a mariage in the hope of the jack is therefore a real decision, and Pagat says a good player delays a declaration until they mean to play a card from the combination. We think that decision is the best thing in the game.

Then the scoring. Say you finish with three aces, two tens, two kings and a queen in your tricks, and the final trick: 33, 20, 8, 3 and 10, which is 74. Your opponent has the other 56, so you take the partie 74 to 56 before a declaration is counted. The higher total wins. If it is dead level, the partie is thrown out, the same dealer deals again and nobody scores. Pagat notes that the brisques and the final trick usually settle it: the kings, queens and jacks are worth only 36, against 94 for the brisques and the ten.

One rule you will meet in the first partie is the seven of trumps. Its holder may swap it for the turned-up trump any time before the lead to trick eleven. Custom has the leader of trick eleven say au sept, to the seven, as a reminder that this is the last chance. We swap the call for a prompt: before that lead, the table stops and asks the seat that will follow whether to swap or carry on, unless the seven is itself the turned-up trump or has already been played. It is asked whatever you hold, so it gives away no information, and it costs one click a partie.

What the table does, and what it does not

Two ways in, both for two seats. At the computer table it is you against one computer, best of five by default, with a Best of 3 button beside it that restarts the match. Or make a table, choose how long a match is, and send the link: your friend takes the other seat. There is no third seat, and no computer seat at a table you share.

Your hand is yours. The server shuffles and deals, and your opponent's cards never reach your browser. You see the talon as a count, the turned-up trump beneath it, the trick in play and each side's declarations. You can open your own tricks and your opponent's most recent one, and nothing more of theirs while the partie runs, as Proust has it. Once a partie is counted, both piles are open. The line above your hand says whose turn it is, and a card you cannot legally play is dimmed with the reason given. At the end of a partie it shows the count, trick points, declarations, the final-trick ten and the totals, then asks if you want another.

The computer follows the usual advice. While the talon lasts it throws away sevens, eights and nines of non-trump suits, keeps brisques, trumps and any king or queen whose partner has not shown up, and takes a trick whenever a cheap card wins it, most keenly when the card led is an ace or a ten. It declares the best combination whenever it plays a card from one, and a chouine at once. It swaps the seven under an ace, ten, king, queen or jack, or at its last chance. It never looks at your hand, but it remembers every card played, which you might not, and once the talon is empty your hand is exactly the cards it has not seen, so it searches every way the last five tricks can go. You can do the same subtraction. It does not slip.

Is Chouine hard? Not to learn: the rules above are the whole two-player game. We will not hand anyone the title of hardest card game of all time, and this is not a contender. We think the hard part is memory. There is no log of the cards played here, so the counting is yours.

What is not here: that log; hints; a table for three or four; Mondoubleau; a deciding third manche. A match against the computer keeps nothing between visits, so closing the tab ends it. The site is free, with the occasional discreet ad. Nothing to install and no sign-up. A table you make waits 15 minutes for someone to sit down and, once somebody has, stays open until 48 hours after the last move, and the resume list on this page finds it again. Voice is opt-in: whoever makes the table can switch it on.

Our test for a game to play with a friend is even footing: either you both know it or you both do not. Unless one of you learned it near Lavardin, Chouine is probably the second kind. Read the how-to-play page, or press play there and watch a partie go by.