Cego

Cego

The honour trumps in a Cego deck.
Origin	Italian
Alternative names	Zeco
Type	Trick-taking
Players	3-4
Skills required	Tactics, Strategy
Cards	54
Deck	Tarock
Play	Counter-clockwise
Card rank (highest to lowest)	Trump suit: Stieß, 21-1 Black suits: K Q C J 10 9 8 7 Red suits: K Q C J 1 2 3 4
Playing time	30 min.
Random chance	Moderate
Related games
Tapp-Tarock, Königrufen

Cego (Badisches Tarock), also called Ceco (from Latin: caecus, meaning blind), is a tarot card game played mainly in Baden,Schwarzwald and around Lake Constance in Switzerland and Austria. The game is similar to French tarot and Tapp-Tarock. It is distinguished by a large skat, or Talon, called "the Blind".

Cego uses a French-suited animal tarot deck called Adler-Cego (Eagle Cego) that dates to the early 19th century. Much like the Industrie und Glück, the deck consists of 54 cards which include of 22 trumps, 16 face cards (images) and 16 pip cards (empty cards). Trump 1 shows the Kleiner Mann while trump 2 has mythological hybrids. Trumps 3 to 21 depict real animals with a pink box on the top of the cards depicting its rank in Arabic numerals. The highest trump is not numbered. It shows a gleeman and is called the Stieß or G'stieß (Fool). Despite the name, eagles do not appear in any of the cards.

All other cards (face and pip cards) are of the plain suits: clubs, spades, hearts, and diamonds. In addition to the King, Queen, and Jack there is also the Knight. Face cards cannot win over the trumps, but are important because of their card value with respect to the total of points. Pip cards have neither high card value nor are they very useful in winning tricks. Like the Industrie und Glück deck, the red pip cards are numbered from one to four (one being the highest card) and the black pip cards are numbered from seven to ten with no corner indices. The last manufacturer of this deck is ASS Altenburger, a subsidiary of Cartamundi.