Marjolet
Encyclopedia
Marjolet is a French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

  6-card trick-and-draw game for two players using a 32-card piquet pack. It is of the King–Queen type, related to Bezique
Bezique
Bezique is a 19th-century French melding and trick-taking card game for two players derived from Marriage via Briscan by the addition of more scoring features, notably the peculiar liaison of Q and J, under the names Bésigue, Binokel, Pinochle, etc., according to the country.-History:Bezique was...

 and Pinochle
Pinochle
Pinochle or Binocle is a trick-taking game typically for two to four players and played with a 48 card deck. Derived from the card game bezique, players score points by trick-taking and also by forming combinations of cards into melds. It is thus considered part of a "trick-and-meld" category...

.

Rules


Point-values of cards
Rank A 10 K Q J 9 8 7
Value 10
score meld
100 4 aces
80 4 tens
60 4 kings
40 4 queens
40 K+Q in trumps
20 K+Q in other suit
40 J+Q in trumps
20 trump J + other Q

Each player receives 6 cards in batches of 2 or 3. The next card is turned face-up to determine the trump suit and put crosswise under the stock. If it happens to be a seven, the dealer scores 10 points.

Eldest hand leads to the first trick. While the stock contains cards, players can play any card they want. Once the stock is depleted they must follow suit, if possible, and win the trick, if possible. A player who cannot follow suit after the stock is depleted must trump if possible. While the stock lasts, the winner of a trick, followed by the other player, takes a card from the stock before leading to the next trick.

Upon winning a trick and before drawing a card, a player may also score 10 points for trading in the seven of trumps for the turn-up card, and may declare one or more melds. Cards used for melding are displayed openly on the table but can still be used as hand cards and can be used for further melds. The only restriction is that one may not meld exactly the same set of cards more than once. Apart from royal marriages, there are also the marjolet marriages involving the marjolet (jack of trumps) and any queen.

The player who draws the last card from the stock, which is always the turn-up card or the trump seven, scores 10 points. At that point melding is over. Both players take up their melded cards and hold them normally. The winner of the last trick scores 10 points. There is an additional bonus of 40 points for scoring the last 6 tricks.

To the various bonus points accrued so far, the card-points in tricks won are added. The objective is to score 500 points over several games.

Variations

  • The non-royal marriages scoring 20 points are between Jack and Queen in the same non-trump suit rather than trump Jack and non-trump Queen.

History and etymology

The term Marjolet is one of contempt, popularly said of a little young man who makes of himself a gentleman, or one who makes of himself an expert on anything.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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