Kaiserspiel

The card deck for Kaiserspiel
Origin	Switzerland
Type	Trick-taking
Players	2, 4, 6
Cards	40 or 48
Deck	Swiss deck (Kaiserspiel variant)
Play	Anticlockwise
Related games
Karnöffel • Knüffeln • Watten
One chosen suit

Kaiserspiel, also called Kaisern or Cheisärä, is a card game, usually for 4 or 6 players, that is played in parts of Switzerland using a variant of the standard Swiss playing cards with 40 or 48 cards. It is a descendant of Karnöffel, one of the oldest card games known.^[1] It is sometimes misleadingly called Kaiserjass, although it has nothing to do with the Jass family of games that are popular in Switzerland.

Cards

The Kaiserspiel pack comprises four suits: Shields, Flowers, Bells and Acorns each of ten cards ranked as follows: King, Ober, Unter, Banner, (9), (8), 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 (Deuce). The four Banners are normally part of the trump suit and are known as Kaisers, hence the name of the game. In the 40-card variants, the 8s and 9s are removed. There are no Aces.^[1]