Aces rank high and tens rank in their natural position between jacks and nines. Preferans is played by three active players with a French-suited 32-card piquet deck. Another distinguishing feature is the relatively independent roles played by the opponents of the soloist. Compared to Austrian Préférence, Russian Preferans and Greek Prefa are distinguished by the greater number of possible contracts, which allows for almost any combination of trumps and numbers of tricks. Similar games are played in various other European countries, from Lithuania to Greece, where an earlier form of Russian Preferans is known as Prefa ( Greek: Πρέφα). Although superseded in this role by Durak, it is still one of the most popular games in Russia. Popular in Russia since approximately the 1830s, Preferans quickly became the country's national card game. It is renowned in the card game world for its many complicated rules and insistence on strategical approaches. It is a sophisticated variant of the Austrian game Préférence, which in turn descends from Spanish Ombre and French Boston.
Preferans (Russian: преферанс, IPA: ) or Russian Preference is a 10-card plain-trick game with bidding, played by three or four players with a 32-card Piquet deck. Préférence, a painting by Viktor Vasnetsov
