How to play Kozel

Kozel, "the goat" (Козёл in Russian), is a folk card game played for generations in Russia and across the former Soviet Union, at kitchen tables, in dormitories and on long train journeys. It is a team game for four players in two fixed pairs, and a point-trick game: what counts is not how many tricks you take but how many card points, or "eyes", are in them. The queens and jacks are always trumps, the queen of clubs is the strongest card of all, and the side that falls behind in the match ends up as the goats. This is the card game; the dominoes game of the same name is a different game. Counting the eyes, reading your partner and remembering which trumps are gone make it a game of skill.

How to play on skill.games

When you open the game, the settings appear. Choose a difficulty (Easy, Normal, Hard or Crazy), how trumps are chosen (Clubs or Named), the deck (36 or 32 cards) and the length of the match (12 or 6 points), then press PLAY.

• The table: you sit at the bottom with your partner Olga across from you, against Ivan on your left and Pavel on your right. Play goes clockwise. A "D" marks the dealer. At the top, the status line says whose turn it is, and two chips show the match score (points towards 12) and the trump suit, with "×2" when the hand counts double.
• Naming trumps: with the Named rule, the player after the dealer names the trump suit. When it is you, four suit buttons appear above your hand: tap one.
• Playing: tap a card or drag it onto the table. Playable cards are lifted and glow; a card that isn't allowed shakes and the status line explains why, such as "You must follow suit". The eyes your side has taken this hand show on your name, and the other side's on Ivan's.

After each hand a sheet shows both sides' eyes and tricks, who won the hand and how many points it was worth, and the match score; press NEXT HAND to continue. The menu button in the top-left corner pauses, starts a new match or turns the sound off. The match is saved as you play, so you can press CONTINUE later. At the end, the results screen shows the score, the hands each side won, the eggs and who the goats are, with your statistics.

Rules

The cards. 36 cards, six to ace. Everyone gets nine, dealt three at a time from the dealer's left. With the 32-card deck the sixes are left out and everyone gets eight (three, three, then two); the sixes are worth nothing, so a hand still holds 120 eyes. The player on the dealer's left leads the first trick, play goes clockwise, and the deal passes to the left.

Trumps. The eight queens and jacks are always trumps, and they are the highest cards: the queen of clubs, then the queens of spades, hearts and diamonds, then the jacks in the same suit order. Below them come the cards of the trump suit: ace, ten, king, nine, eight, seven, six. So there are fifteen trumps (fourteen with 32 cards). In the other suits the order is ace, ten, king, nine, eight, seven, six; a queen or jack never counts as part of its own suit.

Choosing the trump suit. With the Clubs rule, clubs are trumps in every hand. With the Named rule, the player on the dealer's left looks at their cards and names the trump suit before the first lead.

Playing a trick. You must follow the suit that was led if you can. All trumps, queens and jacks included, count as one suit: if a trump is led you must play a trump, and if a plain suit is led, a queen or jack of that suit doesn't follow it. If you can't follow, you may play any card; you don't have to trump. The highest trump wins the trick, otherwise the highest card of the suit led. The winner leads next.

Eyes. Each ace is worth 11, each ten 10, each king 4, each queen 3 and each jack 2; the other cards are worth nothing. A hand holds 120 eyes, and the side that takes at least 61 wins it.

Scoring a hand. The winners write 2 points. They write 4 if the losers took 30 eyes or fewer (the losers "didn't save themselves"), and 6 if the losers didn't take a single trick. If both sides take exactly 60, that is eggs: nobody writes anything, and the next hand counts double.

Winning. The first side to reach 12 points (or 6 in the short match) wins. The other side are the goats, and if they finish without a single point they are bare goats.

Strategy tips

• Count the trumps. There are fifteen; the eight queens and jacks are the ones that win tricks, so remember which have gone.
• Give your partner eyes. When your partner is sure to win a trick, throw on your ace or ten.
• Don't feed the other side. When an opponent is winning, play your emptiest card.
• Draw trumps when you are long in them. With four or more trumps and the top one, leading trumps protects your aces later.
• Don't lead a ten while its ace is still out.
• Watch for voids. A player who didn't follow a suit has none left and may take your ace with any trump.
• Aim for 31 when you are losing. Saving 31 eyes keeps the other side to 2 points instead of 4.

Difficulty levels

Your partner always plays at least at Hard, and at Crazy it plays Crazy. The difficulty you choose sets how well your two opponents play:

• Easy: plays sensible cards but doesn't keep track of what has gone, and often plays a careless one.
• Normal: counts the cards: it cashes winners, draws trumps when it is long in them, feeds its partner and ducks when it can't win.
• Hard: before each card it imagines several possible deals that fit what it has seen, plays each choice out and picks the best.
• Crazy: the strongest: many more imagined deals for every decision.

Modes

• Trumps: Clubs (the default) makes clubs trumps in every hand, under the queens and jacks; Named lets the player after the dealer choose the trump suit each hand.
• Deck: 36 cards (six to ace, nine each, the default) or 32 cards (no sixes, eight each). Every other rule is the same.
• Game to: 12 points for the classic match, or 6 for a shorter one. Statistics are kept for each difficulty and trump rule, whatever the deck.