Play Jass
Jass is a popular Swiss card game that you can find in European card gaming websites. The word Jass comes from the Dutch Jos (meaning peasant).
History
The game was brought to Switzerland by Swiss mercenaries from Netherlands. The earliest reference to this game was found in Siblingen, in the Schaffhausen canton, in 1796. Since then the game has been developed and gained popularity in both Switzerland and the rest of Europe.
The game is usually played with special Swiss decks but there are also special decks like the German deck that is decorated with shields, bells, acorns and roses.
There are at least 3.2 million Swiss who play Jass at least once a week. Jass tournaments are being broadcasted in the Swiss television for more than 30 years and there's even a Swiss Jass championship that is being held since 1969.
The Game
Jass is a card-trick game that is usually played by two to four players. The game is played with a special deck of cards. This deck has 36 cards of four colors with numbers from six to 10 and an ace, king, queen and a jack.
There's also the trump suit in which the jack is worth 20 points and the nine is 14 points.
There are many variations of this game. Actually, almost every game that is played with this specific Swiss card deck sometimes called Jass in Switzerland.
The four main Jass games are:
- Schieber
- Coiffeur-Schieber
- Differenzler
- Mittlere, Molotiv, Plus-Minus