Bettel
No trumps, no tricks — and the Zehn drops below the Unter.
The Bettel is the opposite of every other game: the declarer wins only by taking not one single trick. There are no trumps — and the cards rank in an order you see nowhere else.
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None at all
In a Bettel no card is trump. No Ober, no Unter, no suit. It is the one game where “Ober and Unter are always trump” does not hold. You follow the suit led — and if you cannot, you discard. Trumping is not an option, because there is nothing to trump with.
You can see it on the board immediately: the trump ring stays empty. That is not a bug, that is the Bettel.
The Ten drops below the Unter
Every suit runs: Ass, König, Ober, Unter, Ten, Nine, Eight, Seven. The Ten — otherwise the second-highest card in the game — sits fifth here, below the Unter. That is the one rule of the Bettel you genuinely have to learn.
That is simply how the Bettel goes — and it is exactly why a beginner assumes the board is broken the first time.
The first trick ends the hand
The declarer wins only by taking no trick at all. The moment he takes one, the hand is over on the spot — there is nothing left to compute. Augen decide nothing: no Schneider, no Schwarz, no Laufende. The base tariff is the whole price.
Laufende could not exist here anyway — they are “the top trumps in an unbroken run”, and there are no trumps.
Stay under him and force one on him
Your job is inverted: you have to force a trick on him. So stay under him with your cards wherever you can, and do not hand him a cheap trick to duck under.
And do not reflexively play your highest card: a high card from you takes away exactly the trick he would have been stuck with.
Above the Solo — here
In our ranking the Bettel sits above the Solo and below every Tout. That is prescribed nowhere — the “official” rules do not know the Bettel at all and therefore say nothing about its place. Here it sits there; other tables put it elsewhere.