In fact Tarot cards were used for games long before they were used for occult purposes. Tarot games date back to the early 15th century, when they were first played in Italy. They may be the first card games which had the concept of a trump suit. The use of the cards for fortune-telling is much more recent, and started from an essay published in Paris in 1781. French tarot card. Picture is reproduced by kind permission of France Cartes

Tarot games can be found in Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Slovakia, Slovenia and Switzerland. The rules vary from place to place, and the number of cards in the pack is not always the same either! The most usual numbers of cards in a pack are 54 and 78, but there are some Italian Tarot packs with 62 or 64 cards. The common features are that the pack has five suits - four normal ones plus trumps - and a special card called the fool. Tarot games are all trick-taking games. Cards are worth differing numbers of points and the aim is to take tricks containing more than a specified number of these points in total.

Nowhere are Tarot games so popular today as in France. The Fédération Française de Tarot has 10,000 members, and 300 affiliated clubs. The Comité Ile de France de Tarot and Vous avez dit Tarot are two other interesting French sites about the game. French Tarot is also played in French-speaking parts of Canada, and there is a Quebec Tarot Federation. French tarot card. Picture is reproduced by kind permission of France Cartes

In France there are many tournaments, some played in a duplicate format - similar to duplicate Bridge - to reduce the influence of luck in the results. There is a national championship every year, and in 1999 the open individual champion was Noël Chavey, with Philippe Lebas second.

French Tarot is a game for four players. The pack used has 78 cards. There are four ordinary suits of 14 cards. These are each headed by the roi, dame, cavalier and valet and then have numbered cards from the 10 down to the 1 which ranks lowest. The trump suit has 21 cards, and the final card in the pack is the fool or excuse.

There is one round of bidding at the start of each hand, which determines which player is the declarer for that hand. The other three players team together to try to stop the declarer from making the contract. The three most important cards are the fool, the 1 of trumps (the petit) and the 21 of trumps. These cards are known as bouts, and taking more of them reduces the number of points required to make the contract. French tarot card. Picture is reproduced by kind permission of France Cartes

An excellent way to learn the game is to play against the freeware program Objective Tarot - the home page is available in both English and French. This program is fun to play and easy to use. Although it is in French, it is very easy to follow what is going on if you are not familiar with the language.