Molotow Jass: rules for the game where the fewest points win

A Jass with the aim turned around

There are no teams in Molotow. Everyone scores for themselves, and at the end the player with the fewest points wins. So every trick you take hurts you. That changes the whole game. High cards suddenly become a burden, and a hand full of Sixes and Sevens is a gift.

In Switzerland Molotow is played a little differently at almost every table. There is no official rule book, and many groups have their own house rules. Here we describe the rules that apply on wyys.ch by default and point out what the host can change at the table.

The play decides trump

Nobody calls anything in Molotow. Every round starts as Obenabe, with no trump and the Ace as the highest card, and the player to the dealer’s right leads the first trick. In the first round that is whoever holds the Seven of Roses. As long as there is no trump, you have to follow the suit led if you hold it.

At some point someone can no longer follow the suit led and has to play another card. That very card decides the trump: its suit is trump from now on, for the rest of the round. It already counts as trump in that same trick, and every player after it plays by the trump rules. If everyone can follow suit for the whole round, it stays Obenabe to the end. That can only happen with three players though, because with four or more somebody always runs out of a suit.

Because every trick hurts, the ‘hindersi’ rule applies in Molotow. If you don’t hold the suit led, you may trump at any time, even with a lower trump than the one already in the trick. That way you can get rid of a trump without taking the trick.

What the cards are worth

The Eights never count anything in Molotow, not even in Obenabe. As long as there is no trump, all the cards count as in an ordinary side suit. The Under is then worth two points and the Nine nothing.

As soon as a trump is set, the trump values apply for the whole round, including the tricks already taken. An Under of the new trump suit that was played earlier now counts 20 points, and the Nell, the trump Nine, counts 14. A round with trump holds the usual 157 points. A round without trump holds only 125 points, because the Eights count nothing and the Under and Nine never get their trump values.

Handweis, Tischweis and Stöck

Molotow has four kinds of bonus points, and they work in different directions. Since you want few points, minus points are good for you here and plus points are bad.

• Handweis: a Weis in your own hand, which you declare with your first card as in Schieber. It counts as minus points for you. By default nothing is compared, and every player scores all of their Weis. The host can set it so that the Weis are compared the way they are in Schieber. Then only the player with the highest Weis scores minus points, and they score all of their Weis.
• Tischweis: if the cards in one trick together make a Weis, for example three cards of one suit in a row or four of a kind, the player who takes the trick gets that Weis as plus points. The Tischweis can be switched off at the table.
• Stöck: if you still hold both the King and Ober of the trump suit when trump is set, you get 20 minus points. So if you set trump yourself with the King or the Ober, you have no Stöck.
• Tischweis Stöck: if the King and Ober of the trump suit end up in the same trick, they count like a Tischweis. The player who takes the trick gets 20 plus points for them, even if there is another Weis in the same trick. A trick that was finished before trump was set gives no Stöck. If the Tischweis is switched off, this Stöck doesn’t count either.

The Weis values are the same as in Schieber: 20 for three in a row, 50 for four in a row, 100 for four of a kind and so on. The whole table is in the article on Weis and Stöck.

Scoring and the end of the game

At the end of the round everyone works out their own score: the points in their own tricks, plus the Tischweis, minus Handweis and Stöck. The player with the last trick gets five points on top, as always. This total is written in tens, rounded up or down. So 47 points become 5, and 44 points become 4. Rounding happens only once, on the whole total.

For example, you took tricks worth 47 points, picked up a Tischweis of 20 and declared a Handweis of 20 yourself. That makes 47 plus 20 minus 20, so 47 points, which are written as 5.

If a player takes every trick of a round, that’s a Match. In Molotow it’s a reward: instead of the points in their tricks they score minus 257. Their Tischweis, Handweis and Stöck still count on top, and as always only the whole total is rounded. Without any Weis or Stöck they write minus 26. It’s hard to do, but it can turn a game.

You play to an agreed limit. On wyys.ch that is 100 written points by default, which corresponds to 1,000 counted points. You can also choose 50 or a number of your own between 10 and 1,000. The round in which someone reaches or passes the limit is still played to the end and scored. Then the player with the fewest points wins. There are no multipliers, no Bergpreis and no Schieben in Molotow.

Molotow with three, five or six players

Molotow is the only game on wyys.ch that you can play with more or fewer than four players. At the table you can set whether three, four, five or six people play. The cards are then dealt like this:

With five players the deck of 36 cards doesn’t divide evenly. So one Seven is left out: the Seven of Acorns, or the Seven of Diamonds with French cards. Since a Seven is never worth any points, the round’s total doesn’t change. Bots play the empty seats at a table, and you can also play Molotow on your own against two to five bots.

On wyys.ch you play Molotow free in your browser, without an account and without ads, on your phone or at your computer. The short version of the rules is on the rules page. If predicting points appeals to you more than avoiding them, read the Differenzler rules.