The dealer deals a packet of 3 cards to each player, beginning with eldest hand to the left, then 3 face down on the table as the widow (or blind in British rules), and finally two rounds of 4 cards each, i.e. The first dealer is chosen by any desired method. The cards rank and score, as in most Ace-Ten games, as follows: Deal and play are clockwise.įrog is played with a pack of 36 cards, the 2s, 3s, 4s and 5s being removed from a standard 52-card French-suited pack. With four players, the dealer sits out with five, cards are dealt to the two players on the left of the dealer and the one on the left. Three to five may play, but there are only ever three active players at one time. The following are based on the 1909 edition of Foster's Complete Hoyle which describes it as a 'very popular game in Mexico'. The rules of Frog have varied little over time. The only variant to attain real popularity is the elaboration known as Six Bid Solo which appeared alongside Progressive Solo in 1924 but whose rules are still published today along with Frog itself. Progressive Solo or Denver Progressive Solo appears in the 1924 Hoyle's Standard Games and is recorded sporadically into the 1960s. The variants of Solo or Slough, Straight Solo and Coeur d'Alene appear in the 1922 Official Rules before disappearing again only to resurface in Wood & Goddard (1938). Virtually identical rules appear in the 1908 edition of Foster's Complete Hoyle where it is also described as 'a very popular game in Mexico, and seems to be an elementary form of Skat, which it resembles in many ways.' Almost every American author follows Foster in speculating that Frog is derived from Skat, however, as Dummett remarks, 'this is, of course, a complete mistake.' Moreover, there is no direct evidence that Frog or Rana was ever played in Mexico all the early sources are American. The earliest rules for Frog appear in the 1907 edition of Hoyle's Games.

The three bids of Frog, Chico and Grand equate to the contracts in Tarok known as: Frage, Solo and Herzsolo. Even the terminology is of German origin: Frog being the equivalent of the Tarok bid, Frage (Bavarian: Froag), and 'blind' being a translation of the German word, Blinde, a skat or talon. Later, French-suited cards were also used in Germany. German Tarok was originally an adaptation of the Tarot card game, Grosstarock, to use standard 36-card German- packs. Frog is an American derivative of the south German game of Tapp, with which it is almost identical and which, in turn, descends from German Tarok ( Deutschtarok).

Juego de tarok