Trischaken is an historical Austrian and German gambling

card game A card game is any game using playing cards as the primary device with which the game is played, be they traditional or game-specific. Countless card games exist, including families of related games (such as poker). A small number of card ...

for three to five players and related to French

Brelan Brelan ( fro, brelenc) is a famous French vying game with rapidly escalating bets from the seventeenth to nineteenth century, and hence also a name for a card player, gambler or the name of the place where the game was played. The game is quite s ...

.Schmidt (1800), p. 263.

History

Trischaken is mentioned as a card game as early as 1706 in a poem and listed as a banned gambling game in a 1734 law book of

Anhalt-Bernburg Anhalt-Bernburg was a principality of the Holy Roman Empire and a duchy of the German Confederation ruled by the House of Ascania with its residence at Bernburg in present-day Saxony-Anhalt. It emerged as a subdivision from the Principality of ...

. An indication of its distribution is given by its inclusion in a 1771 Bremen-Lower Saxon dictionary and its description as "popular" in

Bavaria Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total lan ...

from at least the late 18th to mid-19th century.Weber (1855), p. 332. The word was also spelt ''dreschaken'', meaning "to beat, thrash, cudgel", and may have been derived from ''dreschen'', to thresh, recalling the game of

Karnöffel Karnöffel is a trick-taking card game which probably came from the upper-German language area in Europe in the first quarter of the 15th century. It first appeared listed in a municipal ordinance of Nördlingen, Bavaria, in 1426 among the games ...

whose name also means "to thrash". In 1871 it was described as a game of chance, popular with peasants "in the provinces" and played with the "large old German cards", which presumably meant 36- or even 48-card, German-suited packs. ''Treschaken'' was equated with French

and the game of Krimp, Krimpen or Krimpenspiel.

Description

The

Brothers Grimm The Brothers Grimm ( or ), Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm (1786–1859), were a brother duo of German academics, philologists, cultural researchers, lexicographers, and authors who together collected and published folklore. They are among the ...

give a brief description of ''Drischaken'' as a game for three to five players in which each receives 3 cards and the winner is the one who has the most cards of various possible combinations. They give various alternative spellings as ''drischäken, drischeken, dreschakn, trischaken'' and ''trischakeln''. and adds that, "likewise ''karnöfeln'' means playing as well as thrashing", referring to another widespread card game of the time. According to Popowitsch (1705–1774), the Austrian game of Trischack (''Trischackspiel'') was played with 3 cards and the Jack (''Bub'') or Nine – known as ''Pamfili'' – of each suit are wild. In Saxony and Silesia, they were called ''Wenzels'' or ''Scharwenzels''. Thus it may have been related to the Bavarian game of

Scherwenzel Scherwenzel or Scharwenzel is an historical, south German, gambling game played with cards and named after the Unters or Jacks that had special privileges. It should not be confused with the north German card game of Scharwenzel, which is a rel ...

. In Austrian, the ''Schärwenzel'' (i.e. the 7, 8 and 9 or the 7, 8 and Jack) was the highest card. In

Franconia Franconia (german: Franken, ; Franconian dialect: ''Franggn'' ; bar, Frankn) is a region of Germany, characterised by its culture and Franconian dialect (German: ''Fränkisch''). The three administrative regions of Lower, Middle and Upper Fr ...

and Saxony, Trischaken was played with 4 cards per player using

German-suited cards German-suited playing cards are a very common style of traditional playing card used in many parts of Central Europe characterised by 32- or 36-card packs with the suits of Acorns (''Eichel'' or ''Kreuz''), Leaves (''Grün'', ''Blatt'', ''Lau ...

. A detailed description in German of the rules of Brelan (aka Trischaken) is given in Pierer's Universal Lexikon, Volume 3 in 1868.Pierer (1868), p. 265.

Other uses

Schmidt suggests an actual link with Karnöffel as well as a game called ''Treschack'', played with 3 Kings (It.: ''tre sciacchi''), neither of which resemble Brelan. In modern times, Trischaken has become a null contract in the popular European

Tarot card game Tarot games are card games played with tarot decks, that is, decks with numbered permanent trumps parallel to the suit cards. The games and decks which English-speakers call by the French name Tarot are called Tarocchi in the original Italian, ...

Königrufen Königrufen or Königsrufen (German: "Call the King") is a four-player, trick-taking card game of the Tarot card games, tarot family, played in Austria and Southern Tyrol, with variants for two, three and six players. As with other regional tarot ...

References

Literature

* _ (1855). ''Sitzungsberichte'' by the Vienna Academy of Sciences (''Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien Philosophisch-Historische Klasse''). Vienna: Imperial and Royal Printers. * Beermann, Siegmund (1706). ''Einige historische Nachrichten und Anmerckungen von der Graffschafft Pyrmont''. Frankfurt and Leipzig: Hauenstein. * Cella, Johann Jakob (1786). ''Johann Jakob Cella's, J. V. D. und Hochfürstl. Anspach. Justizrath und Kastner zu Ferrieden freymüthige Aufsätze''. Vol. 3. Anspach nsbach Benedict Friedrich Haueisen. * Frisch, Johann Leonhard (1755). ''Nouveau Dictionnaire des Passagers François-Allemand et Allemand-François.'' Leipzig: Johann Friedrich Gleditsch. * Grimm Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm (1860)
''Deutsches Wörterbuch''
6th edn., vol. 2. * Kaiser, Friedrich (1871). ''Ein Pfaffenleben (Abraham a Sancta Clara): historischer Volksroman''. Vol. 1. Vienna: Waldheim. * Pierer, H.A. (1868). ''Universal-Lexikon der Gegenwart und Vergangenheit oder neuestes encyclopädisches Wörterbuch der Wissenschaften, Künste und Gewerbe,'' 3rd volume, 5th fully improved edn. Altenberg (Bodmerci-Chimpanzee). Altenburg: Pierer. * Schmidt, Karl Christian Ludwig Schmidt (1800). ''Westerwäldisches Idiotikon, oder Sammlung der auf dem Westerwalde''. Hadermar and Herborn: Gelehrte Buchhandlung. * Popowitsch, Johann Siegmund Valentin (18C)

004 004, 0O4, O04, OO4 may refer to: * 004, fictional British 00 Agent * 0O4, Corning Municipal Airport (California) * O04, the Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation * Abdul Haq Wasiq, Guantanamo detainee 004 * Junkers Jumo 004 turbojet engine * Lauda ...

br>''Vocabula Austriaca et Stiriaca''
Part 2. P. Lang. * Weber, Karl Julius (1855). ''Deutschland, oder Briefe eines in Deutschland reisenden Deutscher'', Vols. 1-2. p. 332. {{Historical card games Austrian card games German card games Gambling games Historical card games