Winning Schnapsen: From Card Play Basics to Expert Strategy

Winning Schnapsen introduces readers to the play and winning strategy of Schnapsen, the most fascinating two-player card game. No one has ever written a book about the intriguing strategy of Schnapsen, despite the game's 300+ year history and despite certain similarities to the card game Bridge, about which hundreds of books have been written. Winning Schnapsen will be the definitive book on the game.

Schnapsen and its variants are popular throughout continental Europe. Schnapsen is, in fact, the national card game of Austria, where tournaments are played regularly. Winning Schnapsen now brings the game to a global audience.

You do not need to know anything about the game when you start reading Winning Schnapsen. Schnapsen is simple to learn; the book begins with the complete rules and then proceeds to show you how to win. The strategy is presented entirely through thought-provoking, specific examples that arise commonly in the game, in a manner very similar to the daily newspaper’s Bridge or Chess columns. Each such example is posed as a fun and challenging puzzle — more than 100 puzzles in all — and the reader has the opportunity to solve each one before turning the page to read the complete solution.

Using concrete examples and clear explanations, Winning Schnapsen presents techniques that will increase your playing skill, no matter how experienced you are. You can improve your game dramatically by working through just one of Professor Tompa's puzzles each day. If you do that, it will be as if he were your private tutor in the comfort of your own home.

Martin Tompa is a Professor of Computer Science & Engineering and an Adjunct Professor of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington. He teaches courses on discrete mathematics, probability and statistics, design and analysis of algorithms, and other related topics. Outside of work he plays cards as often as possible.