How to play Marjolet
The rules of Marjolet, and a game played out one move at a time.
Marjolet is a French card game for two on 32 cards. Win tricks for the aces and tens in them, lay marriages when you win, and the first to the target takes the match. Read on, or press play: we deal a short hand on the real table and stop on every move to say why.
Press play and we deal a short game of Marjolet on the real table. It stops on every move and says what just happened and what you could do next.
The pack, the deal and the trump
Two of you and a 32-card pack: seven up to ace in each suit, ranked ace, ten, king, queen, jack, nine, eight, seven. The ten is second highest. Only aces and tens carry points as cards, 10 each, and they are called brisques. Winning a trick matters twice. It takes the aces and tens in it, and it lets you lay melds.
Shuffling and the first dealer are picked for you, at random, and after that the deal alternates. Each of you gets six cards. The next card is turned face up and its suit is trumps for the hand. The other 19 lie face down beside it as the stock. If the turned-up card is the seven of trumps, the dealer scores 10. The non-dealer leads the first trick.
The first ten tricks, while the stock lasts
A trick is two cards, one from each hand: you click a card to play it. The higher card of the suit led wins, and a trump beats a card from a plain suit. A card from another plain suit never wins. Say hearts are trumps and you lead the king of spades. The ace of spades beats it, the seven of hearts beats it, and the nine of clubs does not.
Nobody has to follow suit or win. Play anything. Then the winner, and only the winner, gets three steps, in this order: swap the seven of trumps, called the dix, for the turned-up card if you hold it, lay any melds, and draw the top card of the stock. The loser draws the next. Both of you are back to six cards, and the winner leads.
Melds, laid by the winner of a trick
A king and queen of one suit is a marriage: 20 points in a plain suit, 40 in trumps. The trump jack is the marjolet. With the trump queen it scores 40, and with a queen of any other suit 20. Four aces score 100, four tens 80, four kings 60, four queens 40. Four jacks score nothing.
Laid cards go face up in front of you, count at once, and stay yours to play to tricks like the rest of your hand. A card can be in more than one meld: a queen can marry its king, and later marry the trump jack. You cannot lay exactly the same set of cards twice. Melds that share a card can go down in the same declaration: hold all four queens and the trump jack, and the four queens (40), the jack with the trump queen (40) and the jack with each of the other three queens (20 apiece) come to 140 at once. Here, after you win one of the first ten tricks, a panel above your hand offers one checkbox for every meld you can lay, all ticked to start, so you can hold one back. Press the one button below the boxes to finish.
The seven of trumps, the dix
Win a trick while holding the dix and you may swap it for the turned-up card, for 10 points, before you lay melds, so the card you take can join one. If you keep it, you score 10 when you play it to a trick, whether that trick wins or loses. It scores every time it is played, even a seven you drew as the turned-up card. Each of these tens is its own score, so they add up: a seven turned up at the deal pays the dealer 10, and pays 10 more to whoever plays it later.
Trick ten, and the last six tricks
Trick ten is the last with anything to draw: one face-down card and the turned-up trump are all that is left. The winner draws the face-down card. The loser takes the turned-up trump and scores 10, for losing the trick. Your laid cards go back into your hand, so you hold six again, and there are no more melds and no more swaps.
The last six tricks have rules. The leader plays anything. The second to play must follow suit if possible, and must play a higher card of that suit if possible. If they cannot follow, they must play a trump if they hold one. Say diamonds are trumps and hearts are led with the queen. Holding the ace, ten or king of hearts, you must play one of them. Holding only the jack and the nine of hearts, you must still play a heart, and either will do. Holding no hearts but a trump, you must play the trump. If a trump is led, you must play a trump, a higher one if you can, and with none in hand any card will do. Here, a card you cannot play is dimmed, and the line above your hand says why.
Scoring, and how a match ends
Melds and dix points are scored the moment they happen. At the end of the hand each of you adds 10 for every ace and ten in the tricks you took, 80 in the pack. The winner of the last trick scores 10. Take all six of the last tricks and the total is 60, that last-trick 10 included.
In a line: marriage 20, in trumps 40; the marjolet with a queen 20, with the trump queen 40; four aces 100, four tens 80, four kings 60, four queens 40; the dix 10 to swap and 10 to play; 10 for each ace and ten taken; 10 for losing trick ten; 10 for the last trick; 60 for all six of the last tricks.
The host picks how long a match is when the table is made, first to 300 or first to 500, and at the computer table you pick with the First to 300 and First to 500 buttons. The sources play to 500. Points are checked only at the end of a hand, with all of its points added, and the higher total wins. If the totals are level, another hand is dealt.
Where the sources differ
We follow Howard Fosdick’s description as John McLeod revised it in 2022 on Pagat, which agrees with David Parlett’s account as Wikipedia summarises it. McLeod corrected two things in Fosdick’s first page. It gave four kings 80, four queens 60 and four jacks 40, the Bezique figures, where in Marjolet four tens score and four jacks do not, and he cites Gerver in 1966 and Daynes in 1996. And it offered, as an alternative, 10 points to the winner of trick ten, a rule McLeod traces to an error in Parlett’s Oxford A-Z of Card Games, corrected in the Penguin Book of Card Games. The French books give those 10 points to the loser.
Not every page agrees. Gamerules lists the Bezique figures for kings, queens and jacks. For the sweep of the last six 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. Pagat and Wikipedia both say the winner of a trick may declare one or more melds, which is why several can go down together, and Wikipedia adds that the only restriction is melding exactly the same set of cards twice. Bezique is the same family on two packs: Pagat has eight cards each, a game to 1000, and one meld after a trick. We deal Marjolet only.