Drużbart

Drużbart or Druzbart is an extinct Polish card game of the Bruus family.[1] The game is descended from the
oldest known card game in Europe, Karnöffel, a fact testified by its unusual card ranking and lack of a uniform Drużbart
trump suit.[2]

Drużbart is designed for four players and is played with 36 cards of a German pack, each of the four suits
comprising the cards 7–10, Unter, Ober, King, and Ace.

Contents
Background
Cards
Rules The Drużbart
Scoring
Origin Poland
Clock Druzbart
Type Plain-trick game
Footnotes
Family Karnöffel group
References
Players 4
Literature
Cards 32 or 36
External links
Deck German pack
Play Clockwise
Background Card rank J 8 K 9s As Js 6s
(highest (remainder are 'duds')
Drużbart is one of a family of games descended from Karnöffel, the oldest European card game with a first)
continuous tradition of play to the present day.[3] These games are characterised by "the wildly disturbed
Related games
ranking order in the chosen suit and particularly by the special role of the chosen Seven."[2] It is one of the
Bruus family of games whose progenitor was the German game of Brusbart. Other members of the family Bräus, Brus, Brusbart, Bruus
include Russian Bruzbart or Dulya, Livonian Brusbart, Swedish Bräus, Danish and Estonian Brus, and
Greenlandic Voormsi. More distant cousins include Faroese Stýrivolt and Schleswig Knüffeln.[1]
The game was widespread in Poland during the 18th century,[4] one account describing how ladies in an upper-class house played it as an after-
dinner game along with Zwicken.[5] In the 19th century it is recorded as being played "by the lower classes or children"[6] and in 1840 as being "in
vogue among the common people."[7] However, there are only two imperfect descriptions of its mode of play, dating to 1831 and 1888.[6][8]

Druzbart was the favourite game of Count Henryk Rzewuski,[8] the Polish journalist, novelist, and poet who was a past master of the Polish gawęda,
a form of discursive fiction in which the narrator recounts incidents in a highly stylized personal language.[9][10][11] Adam Mickiewicz, the Polish
poet and scholar,[12][13] was also a player and enjoyed Drużbart during his stay in St. Petersburg in 1828.[14]

Druzbart appears to be extinct, although it was included in a recent reprint of the 1930 card game compendium by Gracz.[15][16]

Cards
A German-suited, Polish-pattern pack was used comprising 32 or 36 cards. In the 1831 account the beaters[a] rank as follows, from highest to
lowest:[1]

8 – Dola
K – Drużbart
9 – Starka
9   9   9
D D D D
O O O O
U U U U
6   6   6  6

Cards of the same value (e.g. the four Obers) ranked among one another in the suit order shown above: Acorns, Leaves, Hearts, Bells. The three
highest cards are called matadors (matedorami),[6] and their names appear to derive from the German words Tolle ("the mad one"), Brusbart
("bushy beard"), and Starka ("the strong one").[b] Sevens were unbeatable when led, and the remaining cards—the Eights, Kings, and Tens—were
duds, only fit for discarding.

Rules
The following outline of the rules is based on Gołębiowski and Gracz.[6][8]

A 32- (Gracz) or 36-card (Gołębiowski), German-suited, Polish pattern pack was used.[c]
The aim is to win the most tricks. Four players form two teams of two with partners sitting opposite one another and sharing a common trick pile.
There are no trumps and, at each card rank (excepting duds), suits have the following order of precedence: Acorns, Leaves, Hearts, and Bells. The
dealer deals 9 cards to each player, presumably clockwise and in packets of three, but the sources are silent on the exact procedure.[6][8]

Forehand leads with any card. Players need not follow suit, but must head the trick.[d] Sevens are unbeatable if led, but otherwise cannot beat any
other card. Eights, Tens, and Kings are of no value, with the exception of those that are matadors.[6][8]

The player who has played the highest card wins the trick and leads to the next. Play ends once one of the two teams has taken five tricks.[6][8]

Scoring

Players chalk a number of lines on a slate. A line is erased for each point scored. Winning the deal scores 1 point, and there is a bonus point for
winning the first five tricks.[e] There are penalties for losing a matador, especially to your partner.[6][8]

The first team to erase all its lines scores as many game points as their opponents have lines left i.e. if team A erase all their lines and team B have 3
left, team A scores 3 game points. Gracz goes on to describe a rather complex and less-than-clear system of cartoonish symbols (called for example
"spectacles" or "scissors") that are chalked to denote various penalties incurred.[6][8]

Clock Druzbart
Gołębiowski describes a three-hand game known as Clock Druzbart (Zégarek drużbart). Here, players play for themselves and lines are chalked up
in the form of a tripod with one line erased for each trick taken. Otherwise the rules are the same as in the four-player game.[6]

Footnotes
a. Beaters are cards that can win a trick if they outrank all the others in that trick, as opposed to duds, which have no ranking and can only win if
led to a trick and the remaining cards are also duds.
b. In comparison with other members of the family, there are only two matadors, since the 9 has not been promoted from the ranks, but is simply
the next highest card. So while the equivalent of the first two matadors in Brusbart are the Toller [Hund] and Brusbart, there is no equivalent of
Brusbart's Jack of Clubs, the Spitz.
c. Today, these can be substituted by any German-suited pack of the right number of cards.
d. This is unlike other members of the Brusbart family.
e. Gołębiowski has four tricks which is odd in view of the fact that he names nine cards, and therefore there are presumably nine tricks. Gracz,
however, uses a 32-card pack, so conceivably taking the first four tricks could be viewed as a win earning double points.
References
10. Heraty 1981, p. 501.
1. Smith 1997, pp. 45-51.
11. Ward 1909, p. 658.
2. McLeod 1996, pp. 54/55.
12. Miłosz 1983, p. 228.
3. Dummett 1981, p. 130.
13. "Pan Tadeusz Poem: Five things you need to know about this epic
4. Doroszewski 1960, p. 396. Polish masterpiece" (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/pan-
5. Czajkowski 1843, p. 169. tadeusz-poem-adam-mickiewicz-epic-polish-poland-google-doodle-a
6. Gołębiowski 1831, pp. 45/46. 8978516.html). Retrieved 2019-09-15.
7. Forster 1840, p. 216. 14. Giżycki & Wood 1972, p. 224.
8. Gracz 1888, pp. 31-33. 15. Gracz 1930, pp. 31-33.
9. Miłosz 1983, pp. 254–55.. 16. Gracz 2012, pp. 31-33.

Literature
Doroszewski, Witole, ed. (1960), Slownik jçzyka polskiego, p. 396.
Dummett, Michael (1978). Reviews of "Der Nidwaldener Kaiserjass Und Seine Geschichte" and "Der Kaiserjass, Wie Er Heute in Nidwalden
Gespielt Wird" in The Playing Card, Vol. 9, No. 4, May 1981.
Forster, Charles (1840). Pologne. Paris: Didot Frères.
Giżycki Jerzy and Baruch Harold Wood (1972) History of Chess. Abbey Library.
Gołębiowski,Łukasz (1831). Gry i zabawy różnych stanów w kraju całym, lub niektórych tylko prowincyach. Warsaw. pp. 45/46.
Gracz, Stary (1888). Gry W Karty. Synow, Warsaw. pp. 31–33.
Gracz, Wytrawny (1930). Gry w karty. Polskie i obce. Nowego Wydawnictwa, Warsaw, reprinted 2012.
Heraty, J. (1981). New Catholic Encyclopedia, Volumes 1-19.
McLeod, John (1996). "Styrivolt, Vorms and Cicera" in The Playing Card, Volume 25, No. 2.
Miłosz, Czesław (1983). The History of Polish Literature, 2nd edn. Berkeley/LA/London: UCP.
Parlett, David (2008). The Penguin Book of Card Games, Penguin, London. ISBN 978-0-141-03787-5
Smith, Anthony (1997). "Voormsi: A Greenlandic Descendant of Karnöffel" in The Playing-Card with which is incorporated Playing-Card World;
Journal of the International Playing-Card Society, Vol. 26, by Beal, ed. George, July/August 1997 - May/June 1998. Published by The
International Playing-Card Society, ISSN 0305-2133.
Ward, Sir Adolphus William, George Walter Prothero, and Stanley Leathes (1909). The Cambridge Modern History, Volume 11. Catholic
University of America: University Press.
External links
Gloger, Zygmunt (1901). "Drużbart" (https://pl.wikisource.org/wiki/Encyklopedia_staropolska/Drużbart) in Encyklopedja starapolska ilustrowana,
Volume 2, Laskauer. Largely a copy of Gołębiowski's text.

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