I happened to arrive our game session a tad late: the guys were already playing. I sat down to watch a game of Arkadia and chat about cards with OpettajaH. The game had a bit of a downtime and OpettajaH made an offhand remark about playing Strohmann-Tarock while he waited for his turns.

I jumped at the opportunity to give this game a go (I think from then on, OpettajaH's interest was mostly in our game...). Strohmandel is a two-player Tarock game from 1880s, though we used the modern scoring as outlined in Grosse Tarock Buch. It's played with the Austrian 54-card pack (four courts with 7-10 in black suits and 1-4 in red suits, 21 trumps and the Sküs).

Players are dealt 15 cards and the non-dealer gets the first chance to become a declarer. If one of the players declares (or the players have agreed to play if both pass), game continues. Players get three piles of four cards and the top cards are turned over. Trumps and kings are picked up immediately and the new top cards are revealed.

Then the game starts. The top cards of the piles count as part of your hand. It's interesting, as you get some information about your opponent's hand. It's nice to score court cards safely when you can see your opponent has pip cards in that suit... Gives the game a new twist!

Declarer must score at least half the points in the pack. Declaring is hard, because you don't see all your cards... But we were good sports and the non-dealer declared in all three rounds. We both managed to actually make one game, but in the last round Hannu declared, but I collected the points. Hannu made an Uhu (won the second-to-last trick with trump 2), but that didn't help: I won 7-4.

Strohmandeln is an entertaining game and based on this one session, it's pretty high on my list of two-player card games (Schnapsen is probably on top, and this gives Schnapsen some tough competition), but then again, I'm a fan of Austrian-style Tarock anyway (my preference is the Slovenian game, which is of Austrian descent but perhaps slightly less complicated than Königrufen).

If you have a Tarock pack and two players, there's no excuse: you must try Strohmandeln.

You could also play Strawman Tarot with a regular deck: Clubs 1-10 and Spades 1-10 are tarots, with Spades beating clubs as in bridge. High joker is Skuz, and Low Joker is Pagat, 10 of Spades is Le Monde. Ks worth 4 1/3, Qs worth 3 1/3, Js worth 2 1/3, red 10s worth 1 1/3, everything else worth 1/3.

Or just take two identical packs and mark the tarots on the second pack with a pen.

With that much work you might as well buy a $15 Austrian tarot deck. :)

The downside to the single deck way I play is... total points are 2 2/3 points less than the official game. Not a huge deal out of ninety some points, and tarot lends itself to this type of modification.

Two person tarot isn't nearly the fun of four player. I've been playing around with a 2 player version of French tarot too, also not as fun.

For two I'd rather play Jo-Jotte, which has some basic bids but is more balanced for 2. One could always add in bonuses for some of the tarot bids, e.g. pagat ultimo or "small slam".