The goal
Schnapsen is a duel for two. Be the first to sixty-six card points and the hand is yours. Each hand you win earns game points, and seven game points win the match.
The deal
Twenty cards only: jack, queen, king, ten and ace of each suit. Each player gets five. The next card is turned face up to name trump. The rest is the talon, which you draw from. The non-dealer leads the first trick, and the deal alternates every hand.
The ten is the second-highest card, above the king. The jack is the lowest. Aces are worth eleven, tens ten, kings four, queens three and jacks two.
The play
While the talon is open there are no rules about what you may play. Any card is legal, whatever was led. The higher card of the suit led wins, or a trump. The winner draws first from the talon, then the loser. The face-up trump is the last card drawn, so on the final draw it goes to the player who lost that trick.
That changes the moment the talon is closed or runs out. From then on you must follow suit if you can, and trump if you cannot. You are never obliged to win a trick, even in the second half.
Showing the king and queen of one suit as you lead one of them is a marriage, worth twenty, or forty in trump. Each suit's marriage can be shown once. A marriage shown before you have won a trick only counts once you win one. A marriage that takes you to sixty-six ends the hand at once, before its card is even led.
On your lead you may swap the jack of trump for the turned trump card, while the talon is open and still holds at least two cards. You keep the lead. You may also close the talon, which ends the drawing and brings in the strict rules at once. It is a gamble: see scoring. Before you close, count both sides: holding your opponent under thirty-three is worth two game points instead of one.
Scoring
Add up the cards in the tricks you have taken, plus any marriage you have shown. Two aces, two tens, a king and a marriage in trump come to eighty-six, past sixty-six, so the hand ends there.
The winner takes three game points if the loser took no tricks at all, two if the loser had under thirty-three, and one otherwise. Close the talon and fail to reach sixty-six (they get there first, or the cards run out), and your opponent scores: three if they had no trick when you closed, two otherwise. If the talon runs out without a close and nobody reaches sixty-six, the winner of the last trick scores one game point.
Winning
Hands are played until someone has seven game points, or the target the table set (three to eleven). That player wins the match.
