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4. Finding Your Partner
One of the most important questions when playing Doppelkopf is with whom one is playing. That is, who is your partner? Of course, this is obvious in a solo game -- the soloist plays against the other three players who are partners. You will soon discover, however, that Solo games are not as common as you might imagine.
A "Call" game is the one most commonly played and, in this case, the partners are unknown at the beginning. As explained in the last chapter (see, "Call Games"), the Re-Team consists of the two players holding the Club Queens (an exception is when a "Marriage" is declared). Correspondingly, the non-holders of the Club Queens make up the Contra-Team.
One might suppose that it is advantageous to conceal the partnerships as long as possible, even as far as playing the Club Queens to the last trick. This strategy is usually not the most successful one, however. Normally it is better to clarify who is playing with whom sooner rather than later. You receive no points for secrecy, rather only for the card points that you capture in tricks. As a practical matter, you will soon discover how advantageous it is to know who is playing together. You can, for example, trump when appropriate, "smear" an insecure 10 to a trick won by your partner, bring a 10 or an Ace "home" yourself, or save a trick for your partner. In this regard, there are many possible strategies which we will explain more completely in the next chapter.
You could say, "What difference does it make, if I know who my partner is? I had great cards last time - 6 Queens, a Heart 10 and 5 Jacks. It made no difference who my partner was. My cards were destined for a great win, no matter what." Okay. But, be truthful with yourself. With such cards, you should really play a Solo by yourself rather than having a partner who you ignore. Besides, you get more points for a Solo than for a normal Call game.
Certainly there are thousands of reasons pro and con for any particular strategy. We won't take it up further here, but rather simply refer you to the comprehensive literature on Doppelkopf.
In a call game, there are actually two ways to discover who is playing with whom. The first is to announce with whom you are playing. The second is simply to play out the cards a particular way. Let's take first things first.
4.1 Contra and Re
We'll come back to it again in Chapter 7 (Scoring), but we want to note here that the value of a game can be increased by announcements such as, "Contra," "Re," "No 90," "No 60", "No 30," and "Schwarz." In a game without any announcements, the offensive player(s) - the one(s) who must capture 121 card points to win - are called the Re-Team, pronounced as "Ray." The defensive players make up the Contra-Team. If both sides capture 120 points, then the Contra team wins.
The value of a game is increased when one announces, for example, "No 90," indicating that he/she thinks that the opposing side will capture fewer than 90 card points. But, beware! Giving up 90 or more points spells defeat for the announcing side, even if they do reach the 121 usually required for a win. Announcing "No 60" or "No 30" works exactly the same way as does the announcement of "Schwarz" which says that the opponents will fail to capture even a single trick.
What's the point of all of this in terms of scoring? We want to show you briefly that such announcements have consequences for the odds of winning as well as for the value of the game. Aside from the inflation of the value of the game, these announcements convey information legally about the strength of a player's hand and indicate who is playing with whom, i.e, the partners can identify each other -- on both sides!
Let's assume that you hold good cards and say, "Re." The other players then know that you belong to the Re-Team and hold a Club Queen in your hand. If you don't hold a club Queen, you would have to announce "Contra" instead. After you announce "Re," your partner can reveal him/herself by making a higher-level announcement such as, "No 90," but is not obligated to do so.
There is one limitation to this, however. Contra or Re may only be announced when one is holding 11 or more cards, i.e., before you play your card to the second trick.
Further announcements follow the schedule:
Something else is very important to note: If you fail to make an announcement while still permitted to do so, no further announcements are allowed.
Example: After two tricks, you still hold 10 cards in your hand including the Club Queen which means that you belong to the Re Team. Looking at your cards and considering the ones that have been played so far, you conclude that your opponents will not reach 90 points. You would like to announce, "No 90," but this is no longer possible since your partner had not announced "Re" when still holding 11 or more cards.
These minimum-point announcements can sometimes be delayed, if someone plays a "Marriage" game. Please look at Appendix A for the exact text of the rules.
We want now to consider more closely what kind of cards one should hold in order sensibly to announce "Contra," "Re," "No 90," etc.. Of course, an underlying assumption of all of the announcements is that one will win the hand.
Re means: "I hold a Club Queen and expect, if the cards are distributed normally, to win at least 70 card points."
Contra means: "I do not hold the Club Queen, but expect with the normal distribution of cards, to win at least 80 card points."
By, "normal distribution of cards," we mean that you assume that "Lady luck" is neither with you nor against you. That is, you expect your short-suit Aces to go through and your long-suit ones to be trumped and under these conditions you expect to win the estimated number of card points.
Are you wondering why the Contra announcement assumes 10 points more than Re? Quite simply, it is because the player announcing Re already knows that his/her partner holds a high trump, namely the other Club Queen. This is not the case for the Contra side.
Please resist the notion that you can risk an announcement only when you hold terrific cards. This is because a game that you win without the additional announcement is exactly the same number of points foregone as the number of points lost when you make an announcement and lose the game. In both cases, it costs you two game points and, if your odds of winning are greater than chance (50%), in the long run it always pays to increase the value of the game.
If your partner has announced Contra or Re, how many card points must you expect to capture in order to announce, "No 90?" The answer is
Note:
Over time, regular Doppelkopf players have adopted the following strategy: If you hold such good cards that you think the opponents will not reach 90 cards points, then make the Contra or Re announcement right away, before the first trick is played. By not waiting until the last possible moment, this announcement indicates not only to which side you belong, but also that you are very strong in trump. Your partner can view this as incentive to announce, "No 90." But note, if you follow this rule regularly and make no announcement, you partner may take this to mean that your cards are worse than they really are and operate accordingly.
4.2 Strategy for Playing Out the Cards
There are many strategies for playing a card when you don't yet know who your partner is.
4.2.1 The Case Where Your Partner Announces Contra or Re
Let's assume that your partner has just announced "Contra" or "Re," but your cards are not strong enough for you to respond with, "No 90." That is, you know with whom you are playing, but your partner is still "in the dark" that you are his/her partner. Of course, you could simply wink or give some kind of hand signal to indicate that the two of you are playing together, but this is bad sportsmanship and, besides, it is not permitted by the rules.
What legal alternatives do you have? There are several possibilities:
4.2.2 The Case Where Your Opponent Announces Contra or Re.
This case is the exact opposite of the one described in section 4.2.1 above. There are the following possibilities:
4.2.3 No Announcement Has Been Made by Either Side
This is the most common case that you will encounter during the first couple of tricks. There are two possibilities.
If you hold the Club Queen, play it as soon as possible to indicate the side on which you are playing.
If you don't hold the Club Queen or, for some reason, don't want to play it early on in the game, the best option is to behave as if you are playing a Solo game and try to capture as many card points as possible.
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