Ombre

Ombre

L'Hombre (1887), a painting by Malthe Odin Engelstedt. The player in the center is Rasmus Malling-Hansen, Danish inventor of the typewriter.
Origin	Spain
Alternative names	Hombre, Lomber
Type	Trick-taking
Players	3 (4–5)
Skills	Tactics and strategy
Cards	40 cards
Deck	Spanish
Play	Counter-clockwise
Playing time	20 min.
Chance	Difficult
Related games
Mensch • Quadrille • Solo • Tresillo • Zanga • Bête

Ombre (from Spanish hombre 'man',^[1] pronounced "omber") or l'Hombre is a fast-moving seventeenth-century trick-taking card game for three players and "the most successful card game ever invented."^[2]

Its history began in Spain around the end of the 16th century as a four-person game.^[3] It is one of the earliest card games known in Europe and by far the most classic game of its type, directly ancestral to Euchre, Boston and Solo Whist.^[4] Despite its difficult rules, complicated point score and strange foreign terms, it swept Europe in the last quarter of the 17th century, becoming Lomber and L'Hombre in Germany, Lumbur in Austria and Ombre (originally pronounced 'umber'^[5]) in England, occupying a position of prestige similar to contract bridge today. Ombre eventually developed into a whole family of related games such as the four-hand Quadrille, three-hand Tritrille, five-hand Quintille and six-hand Sextille, as well as German Solo, Austrian Préférence and Swedish Vira, itself "one of the most complex card games ever devised."^[6] Other games borrowed features from Ombre such as bidding; for example, the gambling game of Bête, formerly known as Homme, and the tarot game of Taroc l'Hombre.