Jass Club

A Short History of Jass

How a Dutch soldiers' game became Switzerland's national pastime.

Nothing feels more Swiss than a Jass table on a Sunday afternoon. Yet the game is not Swiss by birth: it came from the Netherlands, carried home in the packs of Swiss mercenaries at the end of the 18th century.

What the Swiss did was make it their own, with their own cards, their own words, and more than fifty ways to play.

Timeline

Five centuries at the card table

  1. c. 1490

    The oldest Swiss cards

    The oldest known Swiss playing cards come from Basel, made for the merchant Heinrich Halbisen. They already carry the four Swiss-German suits we still play with today: Roses, Acorns, Shields and Bells.

  2. 15th century

    The Kaiserspiel

    Long before Jass, the Swiss played the Kaiserspiel, a trump game popular with the mercenaries on their Italian campaigns. It had a cheeky twist: the trump Under, the farmer, beat the King.

  3. 18th century

    The age of Tarock

    For a while the Italian game Tarock was the fashion, especially in Solothurn.

  4. 1693–1796

    Swiss regiments in Dutch service

    For a century, Swiss regiments served the Dutch Republic. In the Netherlands the soldiers met a family of card games where the Jack of trump, the Jas, was the highest card.

  5. Late 1700s

    Jass comes home

    In the last third of the 18th century, Protestant mercenaries returning from Dutch service brought the game home, played with 36 cards. After the Dutch Republic fell in 1795, the remaining five Swiss regiments were dissolved and most of the men returned to Switzerland in 1796 and 1797.

  6. 1796

    The first written record

    In Siblingen, in the canton of Schaffhausen, two farmers accused by the local clergy of playing cards for wine confessed to a game “which people call Jassen”. It is the oldest known mention of Jass in Switzerland.

  7. 19th century

    The national game

    Jass pushes Tarock aside and becomes Switzerland's most popular card game, played in every class and every region (least in Ticino, where Scopa and Tressette rule), with more than 50 sets of rules, Schieber and Pandur among them.

  8. 1967

    Jass on television

    Kurt Felix creates Samschtig-Jass for Swiss television, today the oldest entertainment programme still on air in Europe. It celebrated its 1000th episode on January 4, 2025.

  9. 1969

    Swiss championships

    The first national Jass championships are held.

  10. 2014

    A coin for Jass

    Swissmint issues a 20-franc silver coin dedicated to Jass. A 2012 survey had found that 63% of German-speaking Swiss can play, and 41% play regularly.

Words from Holland

The game still speaks Dutch

The best proof of where Jass comes from is hidden in its words. The names of its two strongest cards came straight from the Dutch games the mercenaries learned.

Jass

Dutch jas

The Jack of trump, the highest card. The game took its name from it.

Nell

Dutch nel

The 9 of trump, second only to the Jack.

Buur

Swiss German, farmer

The Swiss name for the same Jack of trump, a memory of the Kaiserspiel's farmer who beat the King.

One Game, Two Decks

Roses or Hearts?

Ask a Swiss which cards are the real ones and you will learn where they grew up. Eastern and central Switzerland play with the old Swiss-German suits. The west, Bern, Solothurn, Basel, Valais, Aargau, Ticino and the Thurgau shore of Lake Constance, play with French suits.

One reason: in the 18th century France taxed playing cards, and card makers moved into the Confederation, where there was no such tax. Their French-suited cards spread through western Switzerland. In the Zurzibiet, the Aare river long marked the line, and it stayed there even after the first bridge was built in 1892.

And Now in Arizona

The story continues at our tables

More than two centuries after it reached Siblingen, Jass travelled with Swiss emigrants around the world. In the Valley of the Sun, our Jass Club keeps the game going, and passes it on to the next generation.

Learn to playVisit the Jass Club

Sources