Brisca
Text adapted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia
see: http://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joc_de_cartes
Brisca is a card
game that can be played with a Spanish or Catalan card deck. It is a game for
two, four (two pair opposite each other) or six (two teams of three players
opposite each other), but the four-player game is the most common. If you are
playing with six people, a 48-card deck is used (the forty-card deck plus
eights and nines), and if not, a normal deck of forty cards is used.
To win this
game, players must obtain the highest number if points possible by winning the
hands. The highest cards of each suit are Aces (11 points), followed by Threes (10
points) and the Face cards (4 points for the King, 3 for the Knight and 2 for
the Jack).
To start the
game, each player is dealt three cards. If player in pairs, in some versions of
the game the players of each pair can exchange cards to see the three cards of
their partner. This can never be done in the case of six-player games.
The four Aces of the “Catalan Playing Cards”: Focs (Fires), Falçs (Sickles),
Bolets (Mushrooms) and Porrons (porrons).
Having dealt
the cards, the remaining pile of cards is placed in the middle of the table and
the first is lifted and placed face up. This card represents the trump suit and
the cards of that suit win all others, however high they may be. In some
versions of the game, one trump suit is selected per game, starting with “focs”
(coins). In other words, in the first hand it is “focs”, in the second “porrons”(cups),
in the third “falçs” (swords) and finally “bolets”(clubs). On completing these
four hands, the player with the most victories or overall points from the four hands
wins.
The hand now
begins. The player to the right of the dealer plays a card. In each hand, every
player must play a card, although if playing between two people then each
player must play two cards, alternating play, and the person with the highest
wins the hand and takes the cards, bearing in mind that:
a) if all
the cards are of the same suit, the player to have played the highest card wins.
b) if cards
from different suits that are not trumps are played, the player to have played
the highest card of the same suit as that played by the lead player wins.
c) if trumps
have been played, the player to have played the highest valued trump card wins,
independent to the value of the cards of any other suits played.
Then the
player to his/her right plays another card. Playing the highest card (assist)
is not compulsory and a player can voluntarily play a lower valued card if
he/she thinks, for example, that the opponent will win it with a trump card.
The last player to play his/her card will be the dealer.
The person
to have won the hand then collects the cards and places them face down in a
pile in front of him/her. The players then take turns to draw a card from the
pile, starting with the player to have won the hand, proceeding anti-clockwise.
The player to have won the hand will then begin the new hand by playing a card.
This continues until the pile has been used up (17 hands in two-player games,
seven if playing in pairs and six if playing in teams of three). After the pile
has been used up, the players will play the last three hands with the three
cards in their hand, without drawing a card after each hand.
If the card
is placed face up to indicate the trump is above seven, it can be exchanged at
any time (even while the hand is being played) for the seven of the same suit
by any player to have a seven in his/her hand, provided that the player in
question has won at least one hand. If the card is a seven or lower, it can be
exchange for a two. On all accounts, this must be done before drawing cards for
the last time.
At the end
of the game, if a team has the three highest trump cards remaining in play,
this is said and this team collects all the cards, without having to play the
hands that they would have won anyway. This is also possible when each player
has two cards remaining if they have the two highest trump cards remaining in
play.
At the end
of the game, each team will count up its points in the manner explained above:
11 points for each Ace, 10 for each Three, 4 for each King, 3 for each Knight
and 2 for each Jack. All other cards, although they might have been useful to
win hands, do not account for any points. The team with the most points wins
the game. Bear in mind that all of the points add up to 120, so that the team
to have more than seventy points wins. A draw at sixty is possible. In some
versions of the game, winning by more than one hundred points is worth two
points. It is common to play to three, five or seven games won.
In some areas of Mexico there is another way of winning. The aim is to score no more than 11 points in total at the end of the game.