Trump (card games)

A trump is a playing card which is elevated above its usual rank in trick-taking games. Typically an entire suit is nominated as a trump suit; these cards then outrank all cards of plain (non-trump) suits. In other contexts, the terms trump card or to trump refers to any sort of action, authority or policy which automatically prevails over all others.

The introduction of trumps is one of only two major innovations to trick-taking games since they were invented; the other being the idea of bidding. Trump cards, initially called trionfi, first appeared with the advent of Tarot cards in which there is a separate, permanent trump suit comprising a number of picture cards. The first known example of such cards was ordered by the Duke of Milan around 1420 and included 16 trumps with images of Greek and Roman gods.

Around the same time that Tarot cards were invented with the purpose of adding a trump suit to the existing four suits, a similar concept arose in the game of Karnöffel. However, in this South German game played with an ordinary pack, some cards of a given suit had full trump powers, others were partial trumps and the 7s had a special role. These features have been retained in games of the Karnöffel family down to the present, but are never seen in Tarot games. Suits with these variable powers are thus called chosen suits or selected suits to distinguish them from trump suits.

The English word trump derives from trionfi, a type of 15th-century Italian playing cards, from the Latin triumphus "triumph, victory procession", ultimately (via Etruscan) from Greek θρίαμβος, the term for a hymn to Dionysus sung in processions in his honour.

Trionfi was the 15th-century card game for which tarot cards were designed. Trionfi were a fifth suit in the card game which acted as permanent trumps. Still, in the 15th century, the French game triomphe (Spanish triunfo) used four suits, one of which was randomly selected as trumps. It was this game that became extremely popular in Western Europe in the 16th century and is ancestral to many modern card games.

The English word is first documented in 1529 as the name of a card game which would develop into Ruff and Honours and ultimately Whist. In German, the term is attested as Triumph in 1541; the modern German spelling Trumpf is recorded from 1590. In French, triomphe remained the name of the game, while the trump suit was called atout, from à tout (as it were "all-in"). Some European languages (Hungarian, Greek) adopted the French term. Russian козырь kozyr' is of unknown etymology, possibly a loan from a Turkic source. Polish variously uses atut, trumf and kozera adopted from the French, German and Russian respectively.

In most games, the relative rank of cards within a suit is the same in trump and plain suits, but they may sometimes differ, for example in Klabberjass, Euchre, or Eighty Points.

The trump suit may be fixed as in Spades, rotate on a fixed schedule or depend on the outcome of the previous hand as in Ninety-nine, be determined by drawing a card at random as in Bezique, by the last card dealt to a designated player as in Whist, by the first card played as in Nine Card Don, be chosen by a designated player as in Barbu, or players may bid for the right to select the trump suit as in contract bridge or Skat.