Durak is a shedding game, not a trick-taking one: you are not trying to win tricks, you are trying to get rid of your cards. The last player still holding cards is the durak — the fool. There is one loser and everybody else is fine.
These are the rules Durak Peak plays by. Every table setting named here is one you choose when you open a room.
The deck and the trump
Pick a deck of 24, 36 or 52 cards. Aces are high in every deck, and the low end moves with the size:
| Deck | Ranks | Seats it holds |
|---|---|---|
| 24 | 9, 10, J, Q, K, A | 2–4 |
| 36 | 6 … A | 2–6 |
| 52 | 2 … A | 2–6 |
The deck has to cover six cards per player, which is why a 24-card deck stops at four seats. Durak Peak will not let you open a table that cannot be dealt.
Everyone is dealt six cards. One more card is turned face up and slid halfway under the remaining deck: its suit is trump for the whole round. Any trump beats any card of another suit, however low it is — the six of trumps beats the ace of everything else. That last, visible card is the final card drawn from the deck, so everybody knows where at least one trump is.
The player holding the lowest trump attacks first. After that, the first attack of each round passes to the left of whoever defended last.
Attack and defence
The attacker plays a card face up on the table. The defender — the player to their left — must beat it with:
- a higher card of the same suit, or
- any trump, if the attacking card is not itself a trump.
A trump attack can only be beaten by a higher trump.
Once the first attack is on the table, other players may throw in more cards, but only of a rank that is already on the table — attacked or defended. If a nine has been played, any nine may follow; nothing else may.
Two limits bound the round. The defender never has to beat more cards than they hold, and the first attack of a round is capped at six cards. Durak Peak shows the count on the table so you can see how many are still allowed.
Who is allowed to throw in is a table setting:
- Neighbours — only the players on either side of the defender.
- Everyone — anyone still in the round.
How a round ends
The defender covers everything. Every attacking card has a card on top of it. All of them go to the discard pile, out of the game for good. The defender becomes the next attacker.
The defender picks up. They take every card on the table into their hand — attacks and defences alike. The attack passes over them to the next player, because a defender who has just absorbed a pile does not get to attack.
Either way, everybody draws back up to six cards, starting with the attacker and finishing with the defender. Once the deck is empty nobody draws again, and the turned trump is the last card anyone takes.
Play continues until one player is left holding cards. That player is the durak. On a table set to draws allowed, a round where the last two players empty their hands together ends level instead.
Transfer Durak (Perevodnoy)
Transfer adds exactly one move, and it changes the shape of the game.
Instead of defending, you may pass the attack on by playing a card of the same rank that was led. The whole attack — the card you added included — moves to the player on your left, who now has to defend it. They may pass it on again if they hold another card of that rank.
Two conditions: you cannot pass to a player who holds fewer cards than the attack would put in front of them, and once you have covered a single card the option is gone for that round.
The effect is that a bad hand is no longer a sentence. Hold a pair and the pressure moves around the table instead of landing on you.
Tricky tables
A tricky table allows what every other table forbids: playing a card you are not entitled to play. Slip a card past the rules and if nobody notices, it stands.
Every other player can challenge a move they think was illegal. A correct challenge costs the cheat; a wrong one costs the challenger. The table decides, not the person who moved first.
It is a different game to the honest one — closer to poker in the reading it demands — and it is off by default.
Coin stakes
A table can be free, or every seat can put the same number of coins in. The pot goes to whoever is not the durak. Coins are a virtual in-game balance: they buy nothing outside the game, cannot be transferred to another player, and cannot be turned back into money. Free tables are always available.