Durak

Durak is a very popular Russian card game with many variants. It is a game of attack and defense, where one’s objective is to not be the last player with cards left in their hand. It is generally played with 2-6 people.

There are many variants, but this is how me and my friends tend to play it (a combination of full durak and siege durak plus extras):

Setup

Shuffle a full deck of 52 cards and deal 6 cards to each player. Take a card from the deck and place it face up in the middle of the table. The suit of this card denotes the “trump” suit for the game, which means that cards of this suit rank higher than cards of the other suits.

Finally, take the deck and place it face down in the middle of the table on top of the face-up card at a right angle so that the face-up card is half-visible.

Reshuffle

If a player ends up with 5 out of 6 of the cards in their hand being of the same suit, they may call for a reshuffle in which case all cards are gathered up, shuffled, and re-dealt.

Play

The player with the lowest trump card in their hand begins play as the first attacker, attacking the player to their left. Play always proceeds clockwise, and players always attack the player to their left.

An attack consists of the attacker placing down one or more cards of the same value face-up in front of the defender. Each card represents a separate attack. The defender must counter each individual attack with either a card of a higher value matching the suit of the attack, or with a card of the trump suit. Cards are ranked in ascending order with ace being the highest value, though a trump card of any value can beat any non-trump card of any value.

For example, if the attacker attacks with a four of clubs, the defender may successfully defend with a higher club (such as a jack of clubs) or with a card from the trump suit (assuming the trump suit is not clubs).

Additional Attacks

If the attacker (primary attacker), or the player to the left of the defender (secondary attacker), have any other cards in their hand with a value matching those that have already been used in an attack or a defence, then they may play those cards as additional attacks against the defender.

Note that the maximum number of attacks that can be played against the defender is either 6 or the number of cards remaining in the defender’s hand, whichever is lower. The primary attacker always has priority in placing cards for attacks.

Passing

If the defender has a card in their hand with the same value as the card(s) they are being attacked with, they can choose to play this card alongside the cards they are being attacked with and pass the whole attack to the player to their left. Now the defender becomes the primary attacker and the player to their left becomes the new defender.

If the defender has a card in their hand with the same value but of the trump suit, they can instead choose to show the rest of the table that they have this card, and then pass the attack on to their left without placing this card down. This can only be done once per card per game, after which the defender would have to place the trump card down to pass an attack as if it was any other card.

Round Outcome

If the defender successfully defends all attacks, the cards played during that round are discarded from play.

If, however, the defender cannot or chooses not to defend against the attack, they must pick up all of the cards played during that round (including those that have been defended against) and their subsequent turn as attacker is skipped. At this point, if either the primary or secondary attackers have cards in their hand which would be valid attacks, they can choose to attack with them now so that the defender must also pick those cards up.

End of Round

At the end of each round, all players with fewer than six cards in their hand must draw up to six cards if there are cards left in the middle of the table. The primary attacker draws first, followed by the secondary attacker, and then finally by the defender.

Winning and Losing

The last person left with cards in their hand is the loser (a.k.a durak meaning “fool”). Even if a defender is able to clear their hand by successfully defending against an attacker’s final attack, they were still the last player with cards in their hand and so they still lose (but perhaps more honourably 😉).

Strategy

At the beginning of the game when there are still many cards left, it is usually worth attacking with your lowest value, non-trump cards and is often worth picking up cards instead of defending so that you hold on to your high value cards. The longer play progresses, the more aggressive you should become.

Trump cards are the most valuable cards in the game, so it is often worth hanging on to them for as long as is reasonable even if it means you have to pick up bad cards during the game. As long as there are many cards left to draw from the middle and your hand isn’t too big, there is still time to get rid of those bad cards.

The final card that can be drawn from the center of the table is the visible trump card. If this is a particularly valuable trump card, you may try to play attacks strategically as an attacker so that you can be the player to draw this final card.

If you’ve been paying attention to the cards that may still be in play, you may have some idea of the composition of your opponent’s hand at the end of the game. If you only have a few cards left, you can use this to your advantage by playing attacks in sequence using your highest cards, such that they are forced to succumb to your attacks until you have no attacks left.

Variants

There are a huge number of variants to this game, but here are some common fun ones:

Jokers

In this instance, jokers are the most powerful cards in the game. The red joker acts as a trump for all red suited cards (hearts and diamonds) and the black joker acts as a trump for all black suited cards (spades and clubs). This means that even the ace of trumps—which is normally the most powerful card in the game—can be beaten by the relevant joker.

Small Deck

When playing with fewer people or to make the game go faster, the 2, 3, 4, and 5 cards of every suit can be removed from the game. Apparently this is the “normal” way to play Durak, but we don’t usually play like this.

Everyone Can Attack

In our variant, only the players adjacent to the defending player are allowed to attack the defender; this variant opens that up so that every player can join the attack. The priority of play starts with the primary attacker and goes clockwise around the table, with the defender always being last priority.

Cheating

In this variant, it is allowed to cheat as long as you do not get caught. If you do get caught cheating you must undo whatever action you were caught doing (don’t be a bad sport about it).

For example, in our normal variant, only the players adjacent to the defending player are allowed to attack. However, if the defending player is concentrating hard on figuring out how to best defend then a player not adjacent to the defending player may attempt to jump in with their own attack. If the defending player defends against this attack without noticing that it was an illegal attack, then it becomes a legal attack even if they notice it after the fact.

Similarly, if you attack with a six, the defender counters with an eight, and you attempt to attack with a nine (trying to trick the defender into thinking that it’s a six and therefore a valid attack), if the defender doesn’t notice this and defends against it or decides to capitulate and takes all the cards, this becomes a legal attack.