La Sizette and La Quadrette

La Sizette

The Sizette is a card game whose oldest known rules were published in 1725 in the Académie universelle des jeux. Played by six players with a deck of 36 cards ordered as in Triomphe, it is similar to Whist in the way the cards are played.

Several sources from the early eighteenth and the nineteenth century mention that it was played mainly in the south of France. On 18 February 1779, the newspaper Affiches des évêchés et Lorraine announced that the card makers of Metz had set the price of a six-pack of Sixette (sic) at 40 sols. In 1832, Lebrun, in his Manuel des jeux de calcul et de hasard, mentioned the practice of Sizette in Picardy. One can conclude that Sizette did indeed travel widely.

The game of Sizette has the particularity of being played with talking (à la parlante).

Some sources, such as the Supplément to the Dictionnaire de Trévoux in 1752, claim that Sizette is also called Sixte, whereas the Sixte is a game of the same period but which follows the rules of Triomphe and is played silently, individually. What can be confusing is that Sixte is also played by six players each holding six cards.

A version for four players was also played under the name of Quadrette.

See also: La Quadrette

1. Number of players and deck of cards

Sizette is played three against three, with a 36-card deck obtained by removing the twos, threes, fours, and fives from a full 52-card deck.

The descending order of the cards, in each of the four suits, is as follows: king, queen, jack, ace, ten, nine, eight, seven, and six.

2. Seating of the players, the captain

The players sit around a table, each having on his right and his left a player from the opposing team. Then each of the two teams choose a captain, or governor.

3. Deal, trump

The designation of the first dealer is done by the highest card. For this, each player draws a card from the deck and the one who draws the highest card asks a member of the opposing team to deal. This player, after gathering the cards, shuffles them and has them cut by the player to his left.

Once this preparation is done, he deals six cards to each player, three at a time, counter-clockwise. He finishes the deal by turning face up the last card, which belongs to him.

The suit of this turned-up card determines the trump suit for the hand.

When a hand is finished, play moves to the next one and the new dealer is the player seated to the right of the previous dealer. The dealer must always shuffle the cards before offering them to be cut to the player on his left.

4. Play of the cards

Sizette is a trick-taking game which follows the rules of the play of the cards of Whist.

The first to play is the player seated to the right of the dealer: he plays the first card of the hand, and will be the dealer of the following hand. After each trick, it is the player who won it who leads, that is to say who plays the first card for the following trick.

The first to play, or, after the first trick, whoever has the lead, plays one of his three cards, and the other players, following in turn to the right, play a card from their hand respecting the rules of card play:

– one must follow suit;
– if one does not have the suit led, one is not obliged to trump;
– one is neither obliged to overtrick in the suit led, nor to overtrump.

The winner of the trick is the player who, if no one has played a trump, played the highest card in the suit led by the first player. In the case where one or more players have played a trump, the one who played the highest trump wins the trick.

Tricks won by a team are stacked, face down, crosswise so they can be counted easily, in front of the player who won the first trick for his team. A single player thus keeps the tricks won by his team on a given hand – a hand being the period of play between two deals.

5. Points won on a hand

The team that first wins three tricks wins the hand and scores 1 point.

A team that wins the first three tricks of the hand may continue to try to win all six. If it succeeds – this is called making the slam – it scores 2 points instead of just one. If the slam attempt fails, the team scores 1 point as usual and is not penalized.

6. The role of the captain

Sizette is played "with talking" (à la parlante), which means that teammates are allowed to communicate their hands to each other by speech, but not by showing each other their cards.

To do this, once the cards have been dealt, the three players of the team of the first player to lead exchange information about their hands, taking care not to reveal too much to the opposing team.

For the sake of order, it is preferably the captain of the team who asks questions of his teammates, although the teammates may also take the initiative.

Once the captain is informed of his teammates' hands, he tells the first to play which card he must play.

Once the first to play has played, it is his right-hand neighbor's turn to play a card, but before that the players of his team also communicate their hands to each other. The procedure is the same as for the first team, except that the player about to play must not be instructed by his captain.

Once the information exchange procedure is finished, the second player plays the card that suits him, followed by the other players, for the first trick.

For the following tricks, only the captain of the player who has the lead instructs him, and there is no longer any exchange of information – the captain may however make a mistake by asking him to play a card that the player with the lead does not have, and the player's negative answer may be considered as information in itself.

The rules concerning how to communicate information probably varied from one group of players to another, and it seems wise to agree on the procedure to follow before the start of a game.

7. The winner of the game

The game may be played to an agreed number of points, such as 5 or 7. At the beginning of each hand, the teams may, if they wish, change captain.

La Quadrette

As the Dictionnaire de la Provence et du Comté-Venaissin notably states, in 1785, the Quadrette differs from Sizette only by the number of players taking part. Additional information is provided by reading a short story written in 1862. The game of Écarté mentioned in this story is cited only to indicate that in both games it is the king that is the highest card. The rules of card play in Écarté are very different from those that must be followed in Sizette, and thus in Quadrette.

1. Special rules of the Quadrette

To play Quadrette, a 32-card deck is used and six cards are dealt to each player.

The turned-up card is not the dealer's last card but the first card of the talon. Indeed, in Quadrette, unlike Sizette, not all the cards are dealt out and a talon of eight cards remains. The turned-up card, which indicates the trump suit, and the rest of the talon are not used during the hand.

The short story tells us that to win the simple game one must win four tricks, and that to win the double one must make the slam.

One may assume that, as in Sizette, when one team wins three tricks before the other, it also wins the simple game. However, it is possible to understand that the hand was then considered void by some players.

In the story, it is the player seated across from the one who is first to play who is the captain of his team. It is not possible to draw a general rule from this, this captain's reputation as an excellent Quadrette player being consistent with the old rules of Sizette, which recommend choosing the most experienced player for this role.

2. A short story about the Quadrette

"At the time when Jean Gigon enlisted in the 17th mounted chasseurs, that regiment's verbal tic was to say, at every moment, the interjection alas!
It was monomania, almost a rage...
One winter evening, Jean Gigon, as the fourth player, was playing a game of quadrette...
You may perhaps not know this learned game, dear readers.
Here is its explanation.
Quadrette, as its name clearly indicates, is played by four people, two against two. Each player receives six cards. The twenty-fifth card is turned up and indicates the trump suit. It is almost like écarté for four players; but the king does not count for a point. He is simply the strongest card, that's all. After him come the queen, the jack, the ace, the ten, the nine, the eight, and the seven.
The player seated to the right of the one who dealt the cards begins the game. Four tricks win the simple game; six tricks win it double.
Gigon had as his partner an old soldier who claimed to have no equal in the whole regiment for understanding the game of quadrette, a game whose primitive simplicity could only be matched by the naivety of battle (the card game "la bataille").
I could not prove this better than by describing in full detail the famous game that gave my hero the occasion to cross swords for the first time in his life.
The cards were dealt by one of the opponents of the old chasseur and of Jean Gigon, who found himself seated to the right of the player in charge of dealing.
"Hide your hand," said the old moustache. "How many trumps do you have, Jean Gigon?"
"I have the king, alas!"
"Very good. Play the king of trumps."
"King of trumps," said Jean Gigon.
"I play the seven," said Jean Gigon's neighbor.
"I play the eight," said the old moustache.
"I play the nine," said the fourth player.
"The first trick is ours," the old soldier continued. "Now, my boy, play your ace," he added, addressing Jean Gigon.
"My ace? But I don't have it!"
"What! You don't have the ace of trumps?"
"No indeed, my elder."
"Are you, by any chance, making fun of me, young man?"
"No, not at all."
"Then why, when I did you the honor of asking how many trumps you had, did you answer me: I have the king and the ace?"
"No, not at all," Jean Gigon retorted. "I answered you: I have the king, alas!"
"Well then?"
"Well then! I did not answer you: I have the king with the ace; I told you: I have the king, alas! That's said every day, alas! One hears nothing but that word in the regiment since I've been here."
"Ah! Yes, since you've been here, young pup, alas!"
"Look here, old fox, it's not you who will get the better of me. You can see quite well that you too have just said, very stupidly, the word: alas!"
"Ah! I speak stupidly, young man. Here, take this for the word." And the five cards, remaining in the hand of the quadrette professor, flew at the face of Jean Gigon, who scooped up the whole deck and threw it in a lump at his partner's head. And that is how the interjection alas! was the first cause of Jean Gigon's first duel. May this story give rise in you to wise reflections, young Marforio, and give you, in future, the prudence of the serpent, until such time as you have the strength of the lion."

Text taken from L'Ecole normale: journal de l'enseignement pratique, Larousse, Paris, 6 April 1862

References

Académie universelle des jeux, Legras, Paris, 1725

Voyage historique et politique de Suisse, d'Italie et d'Allemagne, François Varrenttrap, Frankfurt, 1737

Claude François Achard, Dictionnaire de la Provence et du Comté-Venaissin, Jean Mossy, Marseille, 1785

Charlotte Figuier, Nouvelles languedociennes: les fiancés de la Gardiole. - Le Franciman, Hachette, Paris, 1860

L'Ecole normale: journal de l'enseignement pratique, Larousse, Paris, 6 April 1862

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Page put online on 17 March 2012
Proofread and reformatted on 16 December 2021

Author: Philippe LALANNE

Le Salon des jeux - Académie des jeux oubliés