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Card games in Finland

This page is part of the National and Regional Card Games Index of the Card Games Web Site.

The French suited 52 card pack is in general use. The usual Finnish design of this has indices 1, 13, 12, 11 on the ace, king, queen and jack. Some games are played with a 32 card pack formed by removing the 2's, 3's, 4's, 5's and 6's fromm the full pack.

The Finnish national card game is Marjapussi (also known as Marjassi), which is a game of the marriage group played with 32 cards. There are many variations of this game described in the book Marjapussissa Porvooseen by Pekka Ranta (WSOY, Porvoo, 1993) ISBN 951-0-18597-3.

In Finland several interesting beating games are played, such as Mustamaija, Koira, Kitumaija, Turakki and also Paskahousu, which is a likely ancestor of the international game Shithead.

Along with Sweden, Finland has its local version of Casino in which the capture values of the kings, queens and jacks helpfully correspond to the numbers printed on them. See Cristian Seres' Kasino page for details (in English).

In the game Ristikontra, played in lumber camps, tricks are taken by playing a card equal in rank to the lead. It is thus related to - perhaps an ancestor of - the Czech game Sedma and other similar East European games.

In the Swedish-speaking province of Österbotten, there is a strong tradition of playing Pidro, which is almost identical to the south-west American game Pedro. It is unclear how this gamme came to be popular in two such widely separated places.

A legacy from the period up to 1918 when Finland was a part of Russia is the complex Bridge-like game of Skruuvi, which is equivalent to thea Russian game Vint. Whereas Vint disappeared from Soviet Russia, Skruuvi continued to be played in Finland until the late 20th century.

Cristian Seres' page Korttipelien sääntöjä gives rules (in Finnish) for card games played in Finland and elsewhere.

The World Casino Directory includes a listing of Casinos in Finland.