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

What Marjolet is, and where Bezique comes in

Marjolet is a trick-and-draw game for two, six cards each from the 32-card piquet pack. Wikipedia files it as a Queen-Jack type of game, simpler than its relatives Bezique and Pinochle, and its infobox lists Binokel as a related game too. Pagat puts it in the marriage group of its ace-ten games, the ones that pay a bonus for a king and queen of one suit together. The trump jack is the marjolet, and the game takes its name from it. The word is older than the game: a young beau, a foppish youth, and a term of contempt for a little young man who pretends to be a gentleman. The first record of it as a game that Wikipedia gives is from 1878.

Which came first is where the pages part company. Pagat calls Marjolet an ancestor of Bezique. Wikipedia calls it an offshoot. We are not going to pick. Pagat’s fuller rules, Howard Fosdick’s description revised by John McLeod, place it in southwest France and say Bezique is like a two-deck Marjolet: eight cards each instead of six, and a game to 1000 instead of 500. This table deals Marjolet, not Bezique.

Marjolet card game rules, the short version

Six cards each from thirty-two, seven up to ace. A suit ranks ace, ten, king, queen, jack, nine, eight, seven, so the ten sits under the ace. Turn the next card face up beside the stock, the 19 cards left over: its suit is trumps. The non-dealer leads. The higher card of the suit led wins, or a trump when the lead was a plain suit. A card from another plain suit never wins. While the stock lasts, nobody has to follow suit or beat anything.

The winner of each of the first ten tricks may swap the seven of trumps for the turned-up card. The winner may also lay melds face up. Then the winner draws the top card of the stock, and the loser draws the next. A king and queen of one suit is a marriage, 20 points, or 40 in trumps. The trump jack with the trump queen is 40, and with any other queen 20. Four aces are 100, four tens 80, four kings 60, four queens 40. Laid cards stay yours to play.

After the tenth trick the winner draws the last face-down card, and the loser takes the turned-up trump. The loser also scores 10, for losing that trick. Laid cards go back into the hand, and the last six tricks tighten up. The second seat must follow suit, must play a higher card of that suit if it can, and must trump if it cannot follow. Aces and tens are worth 10 each in the tricks you take, 80 in a hand. The last trick is worth 10, and taking all six of the last tricks makes it 60 in all.

A worked hand: the seven, a marriage and the scoring

Say the card turned up is the king of hearts, so hearts are trumps. You win a trick while holding the seven of hearts and the queen of hearts. First the swap: the seven takes the king’s place beside the stock, and that is 10 points. The king is now in your hand next to your queen, so you lay the marriage in trumps for 40 more, 50 points from one trick, before you draw. Both cards lie face up in front of you, and you can still play them.

Some tricks later you pick up the jack of hearts. Jack and queen of trumps is another 40, and the queen can be in both melds, because each is a different pair. You cannot lay the same king and queen twice. Sharing works in one go too. Hold all four queens and the trump jack, and one declaration scores the four queens for 40, the jack with the trump queen for 40, and the jack with each of the other three queens for 20: 140 at once. Then the scoring. Say the hand ends with three aces and two tens in the tricks you took, and you take the last trick: 50 for the aces and tens and 10 for the last trick. Your opponent’s tricks hold the other three, one ace and two tens, 30, because the eight aces and tens in a hand come to 80. Add what each of you laid and swapped along the way, and the two totals are the hand.

The rule set we follow, and where the pages disagree

We follow Fosdick’s description as McLeod revised it in 2022, which agrees with Parlett’s account as Wikipedia summarises it. Other pages do not. Gamerules lists four kings at 80, four queens at 60 and four jacks at 40, the figures McLeod says Fosdick’s first page gave, as in Bezique. McLeod found no source for them. He notes that in Marjolet four tens score and four jacks do not, and cites Gerver in 1966 and Daynes in 1996. So it is four aces 100, four tens 80, four kings 60, four queens 40, and four jacks nothing.

Two more splits. Fosdick’s first page also offered the winner of trick ten 10 points, as an alternative rule. McLeod traces that to an error in Parlett’s Oxford A-Z of Card Games, corrected in his Penguin Book of Card Games, and says the French books give it to the loser. We give it to the loser. For taking all six of the last tricks, Pagat says 50, which we read as on top of the last trick’s 10, Wikipedia says 60 in all, and Gambiter says an extra 40 on top of that 10. We pay 60 in all.

Where the sources say nothing, we chose. Melds that share a card can be laid together, because Pagat and Wikipedia both say one or more melds, and Wikipedia adds that the only restriction is melding exactly the same set of cards twice. Bezique is stricter: Pagat allows one meld after a trick there. The seven of trumps scores 10 every time it is played, read literally, so a seat that draws it at trick ten scores again when it plays it. The winner of trick ten may still swap and meld before the last draw. The server picks who deals first at random, and the deal alternates. A match is checked at the end of a hand, with all of that hand’s points added, and if the totals are level another hand is dealt.

What the table does, and what it does not

Two ways in, both for exactly two seats. At the computer table it is you against one computer, with First to 300 and First to 500 buttons that restart the match, and New match to deal again. At a table you share, the host picks how long a match is, first to 300 or first to 500, and sends a link for the other seat. Three hundred is the shorter match, and 500 is the one the sources play. There is no third seat, and no computer seat at a shared table.

Your hand is yours. The server shuffles and deals, and the other seat’s cards and the stock never reach your browser. You see the stock as a count, the turned-up trump beside it, the trick in play, the last trick, each seat’s laid cards, and a score strip with the totals and the aces and tens each seat has taken. The whole hand fits a phone held upright. The line above your hand says whose move it is and what just happened, and a card you cannot play is dimmed with the reason. A folded list shows every card played this hand, since every one was shown. No pile of won tricks is ever opened.

After each of the first ten tricks you win, a panel above your hand offers the swap if you hold the seven, and one checkbox for every meld you can lay, all ticked to start. Untick one to hold it back, then press the one button below the boxes. The panel appears even when you have nothing to lay, because a skipped step would tell the other seat whether you held a meld or the seven.

The computer never sees your hand or the stock. It swaps the seven at once and lays every meld it can. On the lead it prefers a low card that is no ace or ten and helps no meld. It prefers to take a trick, most of all when the card led is an ace or a ten or a meld is waiting to be laid, and of the cards that win it prefers the one it needs least. It keeps the cards of a meld it is building only while the cards that would finish it can still come. Once the stock is gone, your hand is exactly the cards it has not seen, so it searches every way the last six tricks can go.

What is not here: hints, and a seat for a third. A match against the computer keeps nothing between visits, so closing the tab ends it. The site is free, with the occasional discreet ad. Voice is opt-in: whoever makes the table can switch it on. Our rule for a game to play with a friend is that you either both know it or neither does. Marjolet is not a game many people grew up with, so we would guess it is the second kind. Read how to play, or press play there and watch a hand go by.