Very keen to try Latvian three person card game Zole now that I know it exists. It looks like exactly my kind of bullshit. Stripped deck of only 26 cards, a talon, a trump suit that 14 cards long! Ramsch-ish game if no one bids, but it becomes a plain tricks instead of point tricks game.
@mpanhans I’ve been reading about it and I guess the working theory is there was a 3 handed Schafkopf that is the common ancestor of a lot of these games. Apparently the first appearances of Sheepshead described such a three person game with other counts as variants. I wonder when the 5 person became standard.