The goal of the game is very simple be the first player not to have any cards left in their hand. A trump card beats any card regardless of its color and pip value. Does anyone know where the 'cuzzer' might have come from? (Literally translating all or part of 'prostoy durak' - 'simple fool' - into Yiddish does not seem to produce anything resembling 'cuzzer.' There is a card game called Kaiser that is apparently popular in Ukrainian communities in Saskatchewan, but although it has a few similar elements to the game I was taught, most of the rules of Kaiser appear to be quite different from prostoy durak. In the game of Durak, the order, regardless of the suit, is as follows: 6,7,8,9,10, Jack, Queen, King, and Ace. (Probably because the game was very simple, as far as I know he only ever played it with us kids he typically played bridge or occasionally gin rummy with adults.) A quick check shows that the game he taught us was virtually identical to what is known in Russian as prostoy durak, an old version of the form of durak which is now extremely popular in the former Soviet Union: But my grandfather never used the word 'durak' for this game the name of the game as he relayed it to us was 'cuzzer' (sounds like the English 'buzzer,' with a slightly elongated initial vowel). It can be played with anywhere from 2 to 6 players. My late grandfather (born in 1919 in Chicago to immigrants from Podolia gubernia and the Odesa area) taught us to play a card game that he likely learned when he was a boy. Durak (Russian, meaning 'fool') is one of the most popular card games in Russia and Eastern Europe, although it is occasionally seen in the West as well.

Rules for russian card game durak