Durak online
Durak (“the fool”) is the best-known Russian card game. Nobody wins it: the one player left
holding cards at the end loses and is the fool. Players take turns to attack the player on
their left; the defender must beat every card with a higher card of the same suit or with a
trump, and a defender who cannot or will not picks up everything on the table.
Here you can play it free in the browser, with no sign-up and no ads: one on one, or at a
table of three or four against computer opponents.
A fair and strong opponent
The computer does not peek: it never knows the order of the deck or anyone else's cards. The
strong players do what a careful person does: they count the cards that have gone, remember
who picked up what, and look ahead. Once the deck runs out in a two-player game, the ending is
calculated exactly.
What is in the game
- Podkidnoy (throw-in) and perevodnoy (passing) Durak, a 36-card deck, two to four players.
- Nine opponents with characters of their own and five levels of strength, from beginner to
master; each one's level can be set separately.
- Portraits, table talk and Russian voice lines, all optional.
- A hint for the move, a view of the discard pile, a tally of wins and losses.
- Russian, English and French.
Rules
- Six cards each; the bottom card of the deck shows the trump suit.
- In the first game the holder of the lowest trump leads and shows that card. After that it
goes as chosen in Settings: the winner of the previous game leads, or the lead goes at the
fool.
- A lead is one card, or several of the same rank. Everyone except the defender may throw in
cards of any rank already on the table.
- No more than six cards in one attack (five until the first attack has been beaten; this is
optional), and never more than the defender holds.
- A defender who is picking up may be given more matching cards.
- In the passing game, before beating anything, the defender may add a card of the same rank
and pass the attack on to the next player.
- After an attack everyone draws back up to six: the attackers first, starting with whoever
led, and the defender last.
- The last player holding cards is the fool. If the last attack is beaten with the
defender's last card, there is no fool: it is a draw.
The game is one of the halls of SynArteum, a museum of
synthetic art. The source is open under the MIT licence:
github.com/Sorbiers/durak