Durak

Durak: the game you can only lose

Every other card game on this site ends with somebody winning. Durak ends with somebody losing, and that is a genuinely different feeling to play. There is no score, no target, no tally of hands won. Players drop out one by one as they run out of cards, and the last person still clutching a fistful is the durak — the fool. Everyone else simply isn't. It's the most widely played card game across Russia and the former Soviet states, it's fast, it's brutal to the unlucky, and its central mechanic — attack a specific person, who must answer card for card — is unlike anything in the Anglo-American card canon.

Where it comes from

Durak's paper trail is thinner than that of the Western classics, which tend to surface in English card compendiums of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with dates attached. What's certain is the shape of the thing: it's played with the 36-card Russian pack, it has been the default card game of Russian kitchens, barracks, trains and school corridors for generations, and the form played almost everywhere today is podkidnoy durak, "throw-in fool", named for the rule that lets everyone at the table pile cards onto whoever is defending.

Structurally it belongs to a family that barely exists in Britain or America: beating games, where cards are not gathered into tricks with a winner but answered one at a time by a single designated defender. There's no trick to win, no following suit, and no reward for taking cards — quite the opposite, since every card you're forced to pick up is a card standing between you and safety. If you arrive from Hearts or Whist expecting the familiar furniture, almost none of it is here.

The objective

Get rid of your cards. Once the deck is exhausted and your hand is empty, you're out of the game and safe, and you take no further part. The game continues without you until only one player is left holding cards. That player is the durak, and traditionally they shuffle and deal the next game — the closest thing durak has to a prize.

Setup

Durak uses a 36-card pack: six through ace in each suit, with the ace high and the six low. Everyone is dealt six cards. The next card off the deck is turned face up and slid halfway under the remaining stock, where everybody can see it — its suit is trump for the whole game, and the card itself stays there as the very last card anyone will draw. Whoever holds the lowest trump attacks first, on the theory that they've been dealt the worst of it and deserve the initiative.

How a bout works

Play happens in bouts. One player attacks, the player to their left defends, and everybody else watches for a chance to join in.

1. The attacker leads a card, placing it in front of the defender. Any card at all — there is no follow-suit rule anywhere in durak.
2. The defender must beat it with a higher card of the same suit, or with any trump. A trump can only ever be beaten by a higher trump. The beating card is laid across the corner of the card it beat, so the table shows the pairs.
3. Anyone may then throw in more cards, but only of ranks already lying on the table — either attacking cards or the cards used to beat them. If a nine has appeared anywhere in the bout, any nine can now be thrown in, by any player except the defender.
4. The defender answers each new card the same way. This continues until either the attackers run out of things to throw, or the limit is reached.
5. If the defender can't beat a card — or doesn't want to — they take. Before they collect, the others get one last chance to throw in more matching cards, and everything on the table goes into the defender's hand.

A bout is capped at six attacking cards, and never more than the defender was holding when the bout began. A defender down to two cards can be attacked with two, no matter how many matching ranks the table is sitting on. The board shows the current cap beneath the playing area.

Two things the board will do on your behalf, because in both cases you have no choice to make. If you are defending and hold nothing that beats the card in front of you, taking is your only legal act, so it is applied for you. And if it is your turn to throw in but you hold no card of a rank already on the table, you have no legal throw at all, so the bout moves on without asking. A button whose only possible outcome is to be pressed isn't a decision.

Ending a bout, and who attacks next

If the defender beat everything, the bout is bito — beaten. All those cards are swept into a face-down pile and are gone from the game entirely; they never return, are never reshuffled, and nobody may look through them. A defender who survives has earned the initiative, and attacks next.

If the defender took the cards instead, those cards are now in their hand, and they're skipped: the attack passes over them to the next player along. Being made to take is a double punishment — a bigger hand and a lost turn.

Then everybody refills to six from the stock, starting with the player who opened the bout and finishing with the defender, who gets whatever is left. Once the stock is empty there are no more refills, hands only shrink, and the endgame begins.

Strategy that actually matters

Four of the notes below aren't received wisdom — they're what fell out of running this table's computer players against each other with one rule changed at a time. Each row below is a pair of bots in symmetric seats at the same table, sharing every deal and every opponent, over roughly 2,400 decided games; the figure is the change in how often that bot ended up the fool.

• Throw in relentlessly, and don't be clever about it. Every card you unload is a card that can't strand you later, and while the stock lasts the deck hands you a fresh one anyway. The surprise in the table above is the third row: holding back your throw-ins for the "right" moment — only junk, or only against a defender who's short of cards — is worse than simply throwing whenever the rules allow.
• But never throw in a trump. The one exception, and it measures clearly. Against a defender who's taking, a thrown trump is a gift handed to the person you were attacking. Against one who's defending, it's an easy card for them to beat. Either way you've spent the card that was going to save you later.
• Attack with your rubbish. Lead sixes and sevens of plain suits. They're nearly worthless in defence — a six beats almost nothing — so spending them costs you very little, and if the defender takes them, all the better.
• Trumps are not for winning bouts, they're for surviving the endgame. Nine trumps exist. Once the stock is gone, whoever holds the most of them is nearly unbeatable, because a trump answers anything a plain suit can throw. Spend them the way you'd spend your last cash.
• Taking early is cheap; taking late is fatal. While the stock is deep, picking up three cards costs you a turn and clogs your hand, but the deck keeps flowing. With four cards left in the stock, the same decision can be the game.
• Attack with ranks you hold two of. Leading one of a pair means you can immediately throw its twin in as well — you shed two cards in a bout where a lone card would have shed one.
• Watch who takes what. Durak has no hidden discard: the beaten pile is face down but you watched every card go into it, and you saw exactly which cards each player picked up. A player who took four hearts is holding four hearts, and that stays true until they play them.
• And one piece of folklore that didn't survive testing: the common advice to take the pile rather than burn a high trump on some small card early on. It sounds obviously right, and over thousands of games it made no measurable difference at all. If it appeals to you, play that way — it just isn't costing your opponents anything.

Common variations

Durak is a folk game with regional house rules everywhere it's played. The ones you're most likely to meet:

• Perevodnoy (transferring) durak. The most popular variant of all. Instead of beating or taking, a defender holding a card of the same rank as the attacking card may play it and pass the whole attack along to the next player, who now has to defend against both. Chains of transfers around the table are the joy of it. This table plays the plain podkidnoy form.
• Only attacking ranks may be thrown in. Some groups rule that the defender's beating cards don't count as throwable ranks — only the cards actually attacked with. It makes bouts noticeably shorter and defence easier.
• A five-card first bout. A common house rule caps the very first bout of a game at five cards rather than six, so nobody can be buried before the game has started.
• A 52-card deck. With five or six players the 36-card pack runs out fast, so the full pack comes in, with twos through fives added at the bottom.
• Playing a match. Since a single game only produces a loser, many groups play until somebody has been the durak three times, which is the tally this table keeps in the toolbar.
• The fool's forfeits. Purely social, and near-universal: the durak deals the next game, and in some circles is decorated with whatever is handy — a paper hat, cards tucked into their collar — until they stop losing.