Zole

I’ll be using the following shorthand in this document:

1/Ace A
King K
Queen Q
Jack J

What is zole?

This is a 3-player1 Latvian trick-taking card game. The official rules and terminology were published by the Latvian Zole Game Federation in 1996.

The Goal

You or your team want to win the most amount of points.

Below is a list of what each card is valued at:

Card Value
A 11
10 10
K 4
Q 3
J 2
<9 0

If you’re the Big you want to win 61+ points and if you’re the Small team you want to win 60+ points. The total amount of winnable points is 120. Find out more information about roles of the Big and the Smalls here.

Set-up

This game requires a normal playing deck minus several cards. The deck consists of all of the A, K, Q, J, tens, and nines, plus the 8 and 7 of diamonds; therefore, 26 cards are used for this game.

Dealing

Deal out 8 cards to each player with 2 cards in the middle, faced down.

Important

Since there are so few cards, shuffling is very important to avoid cards sticking together. Once the cards are shuffled, the player on the right needs to cut the deck.

You have the dealer, the first person left of the dealer (Player 1 or P1), and the player right of the dealer (Player 2 or P2).

You deal clockwise in the following order:

  1. 4 to P1, 4 to P2 & 4 to the dealer
  2. Deal 2 to the centre
  3. 4 to P1, 4 to P2 & 4 to the dealer

Now that the cards are dealt, the roles have to be determined.

How to play

Roles

You can play one of two roles:

  • Big
  • Small

The Smalls team up together against the Big (i.e., 2 vs. 1).

Ideally, if you think you can win on your own you take the role of the Big; otherwise you take the role of one of the two Smalls.

The pile in the middle is referred to as the ‘lielais’.

Starting to the left of the dealer, P1 will decide if they will take on the role of Big. If they decline then it goes to P2 and if P2 declines it goes to the dealer. Once someone decides to be the Big then the roles are determined for that round. A playe signals that they have decided to be the Big if they collect the 2 cards in the centre. This player starts the game by adding 2 cards from their hand into their points pile, facedown.

What happens when no one picks the centre deck?

When this happens, we being what’s called ‘Reverse Zole’ where now the goal is to get the lowest points. Starting from the last player they will first decide whether to take the pile or let it go to the second player. If the last and second player decide not to pick up the centre pile then the first player is forced to take it. After, the game is played as normal aside from the goal of getting the least amount of points.

Playing

Like most trick-taking games, the play is determined by the first action. Therefore, if the first player puts down a trump then all players must follow suit, unless they are unable and in which case they can play any card. Whoever wins the trick gets to start off the next one and so on and so forth until all cards are played. If you win a trick then you get to collect those cards that were played. The Big has their own points and the Smalls pool their points together. Once all cards have been played then you collect and count your points.

Flowchart

Types of cards

Below is a list of the trumps cards, ranked in order of strength:

# Card
1 Q♣
2 Q♠
3 Q♥
4 Q♦
5 J♣
6 J♠
7 J♥
8 J♦
9 A♦
10 10♦
11 K♦
12 9♦
13 8♦
14 7♦
Important

This order isn’t a commonly seen order; note that the K is lower than the 10!

All other cards are non-trump.

Below are the non-trump cards, ranked in order of strength:

# Card
1 10♦
2 K♦
3 9♦
4 8♦
5 7♦
Note

This applies to all clubs, all spades, and all hearts (minus Q & J).

Things to consider

You typically take this role if you feel like you can win against the other 2 players. You’ll probably want to take this role if you have the higher trumps.

Ideally, you want to sandwich the Big. This is so one player can set the stage, the Big plays, and the second Small can react.

Ending the game

The game is concluded when all cards have been played. If you are playing standard zole, you or you and your teammate need to score at least 61 points to win. If it’s a tie, then the win goes to the Big. If you’re playing reverse then you or you and your teammate want to score less than 60.

If playing multiple games, points are allocated x.

Additionally, if there is a difference of 30 points because the winner party and the losing party then x.

Fun phrases

Caution

This section is a work in progress!

Latvian English
Butter the bread

Reference

Card Value
A 11
10 10
K 4
Q 3
J 2
<9 0

Below is a list of the trumps cards, ranked in order of strength:

# Card
1 Q♣
2 Q♠
3 Q♥
4 Q♦
5 J♣
6 J♠
7 J♥
8 J♦
9 A♦
10 10♦
11 K♦
12 9♦
13 8♦
14 7♦

Below are the non-trump cards, ranked in order of strength:

# Card
1 10♦
2 K♦
3 9♦
4 8♦
5 7♦

Footnotes

  1. You can play this game with up to 5 people but if you have more than 3 players then the remaining players have sit out for a round.↩︎