Cego

Cego, also called Zeco or Ceco from the Latin "Caecus" or "blind", is a card game played mainly in Baden, Schwarzwald, and Lake Constance. It is similar to French Tarot and Austrian Tarock. The game is distinguished by a large Skat or Talon called "the Blind"

The Cards

The 54 cards in Cego consist of 22 trumps, 16 images and 16 empty cards.

The four highest trumps

21 of the trumps cards are numbered from one to twenty-one. The highest trump is not numbered. It shows a gleeman and is called the Stieß or G'stieß (Fool).

All other cards (images and empty cards) are of the regular suits: clubs, spades, hearts, and diamonds. In addition to the king, queen, and jack there is also the knight. Images cannot win over the trumps, but are important because of their card value with respect to the total of points. Empty cards have neither high card value nor are they very useful in winning tricks. The red empty cards are numbered from one to four (one being the highest card) and the black suit of empty cards are numbered from seven to ten.

Card point values

king	5 points
queen	4 points
horseman	3 points
jack	2 points
Stieß/Gstieß	5 points
21 or Mund (mouth)	5 points
1 or kleiner Mann (small man) or Geiß or Babber	5 points

Rules

Cego can be played with three or four players that play in counter-clockwise direction.

Normally, one player plays against the rest. By winning tricks he tries to accumulate more card points than the rest of the players together - just as in Skat, a card game which is played a lot in all of Germany. There are some special games called "Räuber" (robber), "Drescher" (tresher), in which every player plays for himself.

Unlike in Skat or other major card games, there is no official set of rules for Cego. Because of that every region has established their own set of rules in the history of the game. Sometimes, the rules differ even within a village. The following description is therefore to be seen as a general guideline only.

Dealing

4 players: The dealer deals 11 cards per player and 10 cards separately on the table. Those ten cards are called the blind (Der Blinde).

3 players: Every player gets 13 cards, 12 go into the blind. With three players the cards spades 7, cubs 7, and diamonds 4 are taken out of the game. It's played with 51 cards only.

In both cases there is no special order of dealing as there exists in Skat.

After the dealing the players have to check if they can play a Solo: If a player has more than 8 truck (trumps) or 8 truck+ only 2 colors + 2 truck with a card value higher than 17 he should call a Solo. If no one goes against it this player will play a hand game. He may not look at the blind but in the scoring it counts for him.

The solo can be played as ultimo, if one has strong truck and Additionally the small man(truck no.1). At the ultimo the last trick has to be taken with the small man. In some regions ultimos are also played with the 2- or 3-truck or with specific combinations of 1-, 2-, and 3-trucks. Playing solo one can call beforehand that he will not loose any tricks (called Durchmarsch - walkover).

If a player meets the requirements for a solo but doesn't say it, it's possible for the player who takes the blind to demand that all cards are put on the table. If a player is then caught copping-out the Solo, he has to pay the game (8 times the last bidded game value). This process called Schinden is not cheating, but a legal way of conduct bearing the risk of being caught.