The game ends once all players have played all their cards (after 12 tricks). Now we need to find out who won the game. We just learned that we combine the card points of the players who belong to the same party. Scoring and evaluating the game works as follows:

Counting card points

Re and Kontra players each combine the tricks they won. Re counts the card points of their tricks, and so does Kontra.

There’s a total of 240 card points in the game. To win, one party must win the majority of card points. Since the Re party has a slight advantage as they hold the two powerful Q ♣ queens of clubs , Re needs to score 121 card points in order to win. For Kontra 120 card points are enough to win.

If any announcements have been made in the game, the points each party needs to score change slightly — but we’ll cover that later.

Once both parties finished counting their card points, we know which party wins the game. Now we need to determine what score the winning and losing parties receive for the current game.

Determining the game value

How many points players receive for the current game depends on the game value. The game value changes depending on how the game turned out. Each of the following outcomes increase the game value:

• Win: 1 point for winning the game (according to card points)
• Against the old ones ("gegen die Alten"): 1 point if Kontra wins against Re
• No 90: +1 point, if the losing party scored less than 90 card points
• No 60: +1 point, if the losing party scored less than 60 card points
• No 30: +1 point, if the losing party scored less than 30 card points
• No points ("schwarz"): +1 point, if the losing party did not scored any points

The game value can be influenced by making announcements and bids — bearing the risk that the announcing party pushes their luck. More on that later.

Bonus points

Apart from the regular game points, players can score bonus points that influence the overall game value. Bonus points come into play if you’re playing with (optional) special rules. Popular rules (they’re so popular that many consider them part of the standard game) are: Catching foxes, Charly or Doppelkopf:

• Catching foxes ("Fuchs gefangen"): +1 bonus point if a party manages to win a fox ( A ♦ ace of diamonds ) of the opposing party (one bonus point for each fox you caught)
• Doppelkopf: +1 bonus point for each trick that contains 40 card points or more
• Charly ("Karlchen"): +1 bonus point for the party that manages to win the last trick in the game with a J ♣ jack of clubs (“Charly” or “Karlchen”)

Bonus points can be scored by both parties, that means that even the losing party will score bonus points if they managed to pull off one of the moves described above.

Apart from these popular rules there are numerous other (sometimes highly regional) variations and special rules that allow players to score more bonus points.

Which special rules and variations you use in your games is completely up to you. You can add or remove as many of these rules as you like (you don’t even have to play with the three rules outlined above if you don’t want to). Talk about which rules you want to apply before your firs game, stick with it and you’re good to go.

Writing down scores

Once we figured out the game value it’s time to write down the score. In Doppelkopf we use a plus/minus scoring system. Players of the winning party receive the game value as a positive score. Players of the losing party receive a negative score according to the game value.

Game points of both parties are set against each other. This matters, if the losing party managed to win bonus points. In extreme cases it can happen that the party that lost according to the scored card points ends up receiving a positive score for the game due to winning so many bonus points.

Now that we figured out the score we write it down on a scorecard. You can buy pre-printed scorecards or you simply create your own. It really only takes a minute and all you need is a small piece of paper and a pen. If you’re playing at the pub your friendly waiter will certainly be able to help you with that.

You write down scores top to bottom. Each player gets their own column. On the right you note the winners of each game and the respective game points all things considered.

Each player receives the respective positive or negative score for the current game. You add the current score to the previous score to and write down the new total sum of a player’s score. By doing so you can tell how many total points each player currently has simply by looking at the last line of your scorecard.

After 4 games each player has been the dealer once. On your scorecard you can highlight this by adding a horizontal line. That makes it easier to count how many games you’ve played already and who’s up next being the dealer.

Your first game

That’s it! We covered all the basics and you’re finally ready to play your first game.

Your first game is all about practicing the basics. We disabled advanced features in the following game so you can fully focus on the basics without getting overwhelmed.

Once you feel like you’ve got a good grasp of things, you can tackle the more advanced chapters.

Have fun!