Durak has no winner, only a loser. Four players take turns attacking and fending off attacks, and once the talon is gone, anyone who runs out of cards drops out safely. Whoever is left holding cards at the end is the durak, Russian for "fool". You sit South against three computer players, West, North and East, and everyone plays alone. Under Rules you can switch between Throw-in (Podkidnoy) and Transfer (Perevodnoy), and changing it deals a fresh game.
Durak is played with 36 cards, the 6 up to the Ace in each suit, with the Ace highest. Each player is dealt six cards. The next card is turned face up to fix the trump suit and laid under the face-down talon, where it stays visible as the final card anyone will draw.
The player holding the lowest trump makes the first attack. From then on play moves clockwise, and every attack is aimed at the player sitting to the attacker's left, so when you attack, West defends, and when East attacks, you defend.
Each round of attacking and defending is called a bout. It runs like this:
A single bout can never hold more than six attack cards, and never more than the defender had in hand when the bout began. While the talon lasts, everyone is back at six cards at the start of each bout, so the cap matters most late in the game, where a defender with two cards left can face two attack cards at most.
Here is an opening bout with hearts as trumps. You lead 7♣ at West, who could beat it with 8♣, 10♣ or the 9♥ and plays the 10♣. Sevens and tens are now on the table, so with 7♦ and 10♠ in your hand you may throw either one in, or pass and let North and East look for a seven or a ten.
| How the bout ends | Where the table cards go | Who opens the next bout |
|---|---|---|
| Every card is beaten and all attackers pass | Face down out of play for good | The defender |
| The defender takes | Into the defender's hand | The player on the defender's left; the defender's own turn to attack is skipped |
Then everyone draws back up to six from the talon, starting with the player who opened the bout first, the others clockwise after them, and the defender last. Everyone sees the cards a defender picks up, which is worth remembering for the rest of the game.
Throw-in is the default mode, and everything above holds in both. Transfer mode gives the defender one extra choice, available only until the first cover is played. If all the attack cards share a rank, you can add one or more cards of that same rank with the Transfer button. You become the lead attacker, and the next player clockwise has to defend against the whole pile. The new defender must hold at least as many cards as the attack will then contain, and the six-card cap still holds.
An example with spades as trumps, where East opens on you with 9♣. You hold the 9♥, so you transfer instead of covering, and West now faces 9♣ and 9♥. West has the 9♠ and transfers again. North holds 10♣, Q♣ and K♣ for the club but has no spade at all and only the 8♥ in hearts, so North must take. West, who made the last transfer, gets the first chance to throw in and passes, East adds the 9♦, and North picks up all four nines. East, who opened the bout, refills first, and because North took, East attacks again, this time at you.
With all four players still in, a rank has only four cards, so one bout can see at most three transfers, and an attack you have passed on can never travel all the way back round to you. Transfers are made only by actually playing the matching card, so showing a trump of that rank to pass the attack, a house rule in some circles, is not available here.
When the last talon card, the face-up trump, has been drawn, nobody refills any more. A player whose hand is empty is checked only after the whole bout is over, and leaves the game at that point, and the seats left empty are skipped from then on. When only one player still holds cards, the result screen announces "You are the Durak" or "North is the Durak" and lists every player's remaining cards. If the final cards all disappear in one bout, nobody loses, making it a draw, and the screen reads "Everyone goes out together". Each game stands on its own, with no running score between games.
No to both. The six-card cap applies from the very first bout, with no smaller limit on the opening defense, and the trump six cannot be swapped for the face-up trump. Two other house rules you may know from other tables are not used either, so there are no partnerships, and once a defender has played a cover, the chance to transfer is gone for that bout.
While the talon still has cards, whatever you play is replaced at the end of the bout, so what decides the game is the quality of your hand at the moment the talon runs dry. Attack with your lowest non-trumps. When you defend, beat each card with the cheapest card that does the job, a 9♦ on an 8♦ rather than a trump. Picking up a couple of sixes and sevens early is often cheaper than spending your best trump to stop them, because those low cards are easy to get rid of later as attacks.
The defender's covers widen what you are allowed to throw in. If West beats your 7♣ with the A♣, aces join the table, and an ace of any other non-trump suit can now be stopped only by a trump.
Everything a player takes stays in their hand until they play it, and you watched it go in. After North picks up all four nines in the transfer example, nobody else can open with a nine or throw one in while North holds them, and North can later open with several nines at once to shed cards quickly. There are nine trumps in the deck, and the face-up one ends up with whoever draws the last talon card, so one trump's location is always public.
With the talon empty, a successful defense pays twice, as you lose cards and you open the next bout. Opening with a pair sheds two cards in one go. Against a defender with a single card left, you may attack with one card only, and if they beat it the bout ends at once and they are out. So when the player on your left is down to one card, lead the card they are least able to beat, since the trump ace cannot be beaten at all, and a card higher than every unplayed card of its suit can be stopped only by a trump.
Attack with matching ranks, defend with higher cards or trumps, and shed every card before the talon empties so you are not the last player left holding cards.
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