 A 40-card, Spanish-suited pack | |
| Origin | Spain |
|---|---|
| Type | trick taking |
| Players | 2 to 6 |
| Skills | tactics, memory |
| Cards | 40 or 48 cards |
| Deck | Spanish |
| Rank (high→low) | A 3 R C F 7 6 5 4 2 |
| Play | counter-clockwise |
| Chance | medium |
| Related games | |
| Briscola • Calabresella | |
Brisca is a popular Spanish card game [1] played by two teams of two with a 40-card Spanish-suited pack or two teams of three using a 48-card pack.
Brisca and its cousins are widespread in many countries, especially in the Mediterranean and Latin American areas. Related games include Italian Briscola, Lombard Brìscula, Sicilian Brìscula, Neapolitan Brìscula or Brisca, Catalonian Brisca, Portuguese Bisca, Montenegrin and Croatian Briškula, Slovenian Briškola, Maltese Bixkla and Libyan Skembeel.
Its origin is probably found in Brusquembille, a French game whose rules were published in 1718. The development and scoring of the cards are similar, but Brusquembille was played with a French Piquet pack of 32 cards. This evolved into another game called Brisque that gave rise to Brisca, Bezique and the highly elaborate Briscan. Another theory proposes an Italian origin of from the game of Bazzica, which is similar to Bezique.
To win this game a player must earn as many points as possible, winning the rounds. The highest cards of each suit are:
| Card |  |  |  |  |  |
| Number | Ace or One (As or Uno) | Three or Trey (Tres) | King or Twelve (Rey or Doce) | Knight or Eleven (Caballo or Once) | Jack or Ten (Sota or Diez) |
| Value | 11 points | 10 points | 4 points | 3 points | 2 points |
To start the game, three cards are dealt to each player. In the four-player game, in some variants the players of each pair exchange cards to find out which three cards their partner has. If there are six players they can also exchange cards within their team of three.
After the cards have been dealt, the remainder are placed in the middle of the table and the top card turned and placed face up. The suit of this card is determines trumps and the cards of this suit beat all the others, however high they may be. In some game variations, one trump suit is assigned per deal, starting with Coins, that is to say, in the first deal it is Coins; in the second, Cups; in the third, Swords, and finally, Clubs. At the end of these four deals, the player with the most victories or the most points from the four deals wins.
The player to the right of the dealer leads a card to the first trick and each player plays a card to the trick in turn. Then the player on his right throws another card and so on. If playing between two people then each player must draw two cards alternating the play.
Playing the highest card (assist) is not mandatory as in Tute and a player may choose to play a lower card if they fear, for example, that their opponent may beat it. The last player to play will be the one who has dealt.
The player who plays the highest card wins and takes the trick, bearing in mind that:
After this, the player who has won the trick collects the cards and places them face down in front of him. Players then draw a card from the stock in turn, the player who won the trick first and then the others in counter-clockwise order. Whoever won the trick then leads to the next. This continues successively until the stock is exhausted (17 tricks if two play, 7 tricks if four play and 6 tricks if six play). After the stock is finished, players will play the last three tricks with the three cards in their hands.
If the card that is turned as trumps is greater than Seven, it can be exchanged for the Seven of the same suit by any player who has it, at any time, even while playing a trick, provided that the player in question has won at least one trick. In case the card is Seven or less, it can be exchanged for the Two. Either way, this must be done before the last card of the stock has been drawn.
Towards the end of the game, if a team has in its tricks the three highest trumps, it announces this and collects all the cards, without having to play the final tricks, which they would win anyway. This can also be done when each player has two cards left if they have the two highest remaining trumps in the game.
If a player has the Ace or 1 of the trump suit he may say: "arrastro" ("drag" or "pull") and all the players who have not yet played to the trick must draw the best card from their hands starting with the trump suit in the order: 3, King, Knight, Jack, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4 and 2.
If a player has no trumps, the best card in hand must be played in the order above order.
If, for example, the trump suit is Coins and someone plays the 1 of Coins and says arrastro, if you have not yet played to the trick and you have the 3 of Clubs, 1 of Swords and 1 of Cups; you must play the 1 of Swords or 1 of Cups, but if you have the 3 of Clubs, 1 of Swords and 3 of Coins; you must play the 3 of Coins because it is the highest available trump card you have.
At the end of the game, each team counts the points they have earned, scoring, as explained above, 11 points for each Ace, 10 for each Three, 4 for each King, 3 for each Knight and 2 for each Jack. The other cards, although they may have helped to win tricks, do not score points. The team with the most points wins. Because the total number of points in the game is 120, the side that passes sixty points wins. If both sides tie on sixty points each, the side with the most cards wins. In some variants, winning by more than a hundred card points is worth two game points. Game is usually 3, 5 or 7 points.
In some places in Mexico there is another way to win. The objective is not to add more than 11 total points at the end of the game.
In Italy, Briscola is one of the most popular card games in the country along with Scopa and Tressette. In parts of Lombardy and Piedmont a Seven is worth 10 points and a Three is worth nothing. In parts of Tuscany the values of the Jack and Knight are reversed.
Briscola to scoperte or "Brisca Ouverte"; the players cards are placed face up on the table. It is normally played between two.
The Sicilian game of Mariaje or Cinquecento is played in the same way, except that if in the King and Knight of the same suit are captured; it earns an extra 40 points if they are trumps and 20 if they are from one of the other 3 suits.
The best known relative is called Briscola Chiamata. It is played exclusively with five players and all the cards are dealt, so that each one receives a hand of 8 cards.
Further variations:
Brisca Rematada is a Chilean game for 3 players. A 40-card pack is used with the Twos and Fours removed to leave 32 cards.
Ten cards are dealt to each player and the remaining two dealt face down on the table, these two cards are called talon.
Players now announce the score they think they can achieve, the minimum bid being 100 points. Players may "pass" if they believe they cannot beat an earlier bid. Once two players have passed, the third player wins the auction, takes the talon adds it to his hand (it is mandatory to show the other players the said cards), selects 2 cards from his hand and places them face down in his pile of countable cards for scoring. The player who wins the "auction" is the one who decides the trump suit for that deal.
When play is finished, the declarer counts his cards to see if he has achieved his bid. If so, the points are added to his score. If he fails, these points are distributed among the other 2 players.
The players who did not win the auction (the defenders) are not considered partners, so the so-called "boarding" strategy cannot be used (whereby if which one of the players does not have cards in his hand of the led suit, but his partner is heading the trick, he can throw any card away).
Tip: it is recommended not to exceed 170 points when finishing as this is calculating the power to obtain the total number of cards with points and the Knight-King combination that scores 40 points, plus 10 points for winning the last trick.
Muerte al Tres is a Cuban variant in which the aim is to "hunt" or "kill" the Three of trumps with the Ace of trumps. An important note is that the player who has the trump Ace in his hand cannot play it if the Three has not been played (except in the last trick); the trump Ace is a prisoner until the trump Three is discarded, except for the last trick The moment the Three has been "killed" the deal ends and the team or person who killed the Three wins. If the trump Three manages to escape death by the Ace then the points will be counted normally.
Pinochle, also called pinocle or penuchle, is a trick-taking, Ace-Ten card game typically for two to four players and played with a 48-card deck. It is derived from the card game bezique; players score points by trick-taking and also by forming combinations of characters into melds. It is thus considered part of a "trick-and-meld" category which also includes the game belote. Each hand is played in three phases: bidding, melds, and tricks. The standard game today is called "partnership auction pinochle".
A trick-taking game is a card or tile-based game in which play of a hand centers on a series of finite rounds or units of play, called tricks, which are each evaluated to determine a winner or taker of that trick. The object of such games then may be closely tied to the number of tricks taken, as in plain-trick games such as contract bridge, whist, and spades, or to the value of the cards contained in taken tricks, as in point-trick games such as pinochle, the tarot family, briscola, and most evasion games like hearts. Trick-and-draw games are trick-taking games in which the players can fill up their hands after each trick. In most variants, players are free to play any card into a trick in the first phase of the game, but must follow suit as soon as the stock is depleted. Trick-avoidance games like reversis or polignac are those in which the aim is to avoid taking some or all tricks.
Whist is a classic English trick-taking card game which was widely played in the 18th and 19th centuries. Although the rules are simple, there is scope for strategic play.
All Fours is a traditional English card game, once popular in pubs and taverns as well as among the gentry, that flourished as a gambling game until the end of the 19th century. It is a trick-taking card game that was originally designed for two players, but developed variants for more players. According to Charles Cotton, the game originated in Kent, but spread to the whole of England and eventually abroad. It is the eponymous and earliest recorded game of a family that flourished most in 19th century North America and whose progeny include Pitch, Pedro and Cinch, games that even competed with Poker and Euchre. Nowadays the original game is especially popular in Trinidad and Tobago, but regional variants have also survived in England. The game's "great mark of distinction" is that it gave the name 'Jack' to the card previously known as the Knave.
Bezique or Bésigue is a 19th-century French melding and trick-taking card game for two players that came to Britain and is still played today. The game is derived from Piquet, possibly via Marriage (Sixty-six) and Briscan, with additional scoring features, notably the peculiar liaison of the and that is also a feature of Pinochle, Binokel, and similarly named games that vary by country.
Pedro is an American trick-taking card game of the All Fours family based on Auction Pitch. Its most popular variant is known as Cinch, Double Pedro or High Five which was developed in Denver, Colorado around 1885 and soon regarded as the most important American member of the All Fours family. Although it went out of fashion with the rise of Auction Bridge, it is still widely played on the western coast of the United States and in its southern states, being the dominant game in some locations in Louisiana. Forms of the game have been reported from Nicaragua, the Azores, Niobe NY, Italy and Finland. The game is primarily played by four players in fixed partnerships, but can also be played by 2–6 individual players.
Briscola is one of Italy's most popular games, together with Scopa and Tressette (Tresette). A little-changed descendant of Brusquembille, the ancestor of Briscan and Bezique, Briscola is a Mediterranean trick-taking, Ace-Ten card game for two to six players played with a standard Italian 40-card deck. The game can also be played with a modern Anglo-French deck, without the eight, nine and ten cards. With three or six players, twos are removed from the deck to ensure the number of cards in the deck is a multiple of the number of players; a single two for three players and all four twos for six players. The four and six-player versions of the game are played as a partnership game of two teams, with players seated such that every player is adjacent to two opponents.
Pitch is the American name of the English trick-taking game of Blind All Fours which, in turn, is derived from classic All Fours. Historically, Pitch started as "Blind All Fours", a very simple All Fours variant that is still played in England as a pub game. The modern game involving a bidding phase and setting back a party's score if the bid is not reached came up in the middle of the 19th century and is more precisely known as Auction Pitch or Setback.
Jass is a family of trick taking, Ace-Ten card games and, in its key forms, a distinctive branch of the Marriage family. It is popular in its native Switzerland as well as the rest of the Alemannic German-speaking area of Europe, Italian South Tyrol and in a few places in Wisconsin, Ohio, California, Oregon and Washington USA.
Sueca is a 4 player-partnership point trick-taking card game of the Ace-Ten family, and a popular variant of the Bisca card game. The game is played in Portugal, Brazil, Angola and other Portuguese communities. Its closest relative is the very similar German game Einwerfen.
Smear is a North-American trick-taking card game of the All Fours group, and a variant of Pitch (Setback). Several slightly different versions are played in Michigan, Minnesota, Northern and Central Iowa, Wisconsin and also in Ontario, Canada.
Manille is a Catalan French trick-taking card game which uses a 32 card deck. It spread to the rest of France in the early 20th century, but was subsequently checked and reversed by the expansion of Belote. It is still popular in France and the western part of Belgium.
Klaberjass or Bela is a trick-taking Ace-Ten card game that is most popular in German communities. In its basic form it is a 9-card trick-and-draw game for two players using a 32-card piquet pack.
The Jass group, also known as the Jack–Nine card games, form a family of trick-taking games in which the jack (jass) and nine (manille) of the trump suit are the highest-ranking trumps, and the tens and aces of all suits are the next most valuable cards. Games in this family are typically played by 2 or 4 players with 32 French-suited cards.
Clag is a trick-taking card game using a standard pack of 52 French-suited playing cards. It is similar to Oh Hell, and can be played by three to seven players. Clag originated in the Royal Air Force and started as an acronym for Clouds Low Aircraft Grounded.
Court piece is a trick-taking card game similar to the card game whist in which eldest hand makes trumps after the first five cards have been dealt, and trick-play is typically stopped after one party has won seven tricks. A bonus is awarded if one party wins the first seven tricks, or even all tricks. The game is played by four players in two teams, but there are also adaptations for two or three players.
Brusquembille or Briscambille is an historical, French, 3-card trick-and-draw game for two to five players using a 32-card piquet pack. The game has variable trumps. Side-payments are made for keeping or winning aces and tens.
Bisca is a card game based on the Italian deck.
Briscan is an 18th-century, French Ace-Ten card game for two players played with a 32-card Piquet pack. It is a member of the Marriage group of games in which the 'marriage' of a King and Queen brings a bonus score, but Briscan takes this simple concept to extraordinary lengths.
Sjavs is a Danish card game of the Schafkopf family that is played in two main variants. In Denmark, it is a 3-player game, played with a shortened pack of 20 cards; in the Faroe Islands, where it is very popular, it is a four-hand, partnership game using a standard Piquet pack of 32 cards.
