| Kaiserspiel | |
| Image Caption: | The card deck for Kaiserspiel |
| Type: | Trick-taking |
| Players: | 2, 4, 6 |
| Num Cards: | 40 or 48 |
| Deck: | Swiss deck (Kaiserspiel variant) |
| Play: | Anticlockwise |
| Origin: | Switzerland |
| Related: | KarnöffelKnüffelnWatten |
| Footnotes: | One chosen suit |
Kaiserspiel, also called Kaisern or Cheisärä, is a card game, usually for 4 or 6 players, that is played in parts of Switzerland using a variant of the standard Swiss playing cards with 40 or 48 cards. It is a descendant of Karnöffel, one of the oldest card games known.[1] It is sometimes misleadingly called Kaiserjass, although it has nothing to do with the Jass family of games that are popular in Switzerland.
The Kaiserspiel pack comprises four suits: Shields, Flowers, Bells and Acorns each of ten cards ranked as follows: King, Ober, Unter, Banner, (9), (8), 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 (Deuce). The four Banners are normally part of the trump suit and are known as Kaisers, hence the name of the game. In the 40-card variants, the 8s and 9s are removed. There are no Aces.[1]