Burraco cards
How many cards you need, how many each player is dealt and how much each one is worth: everything there is to know about the Burraco deck, with the points table.
The deck: 108 cards
You use two French 52-card decks (hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades, from ace to king) plus 4 jokers: 108 cards in all. So there are two copies of every normal card, for example two 7s of hearts.
How many cards are dealt
| What | Cards |
|---|---|
| To each player | 11 |
| Pozzetti | 2, of 11 cards each |
| Discard pile | 1 face-up card to start |
| Deck you draw from | all the rest |
With two players 63 cards are left in the deck; with four, 41. To find out what the pozzetti are for, read the Burraco pozzetto.
How much each card is worth
| Card | Points |
|---|---|
| Joker | 30 |
| Pinella (2) | 20 |
| Ace | 15 |
| 8 to king | 10 |
| 3 to 7 | 5 |
At the end of the round, cards melded on the table count as positive, cards left in hand as negative. That's why a joker left in your hand is expensive: 30 points lost.
Wild cards: jokers and pinelle
Jokers and 2s are wild cards (matte): they can take the place of any card in a run or a set. The rules to remember:
- each meld can contain only one wild card;
- you can't meld a group made only of wild cards;
- a pinella of the same suit as the run, placed where the 2 belongs, counts as a normal card: for example 2-3-4 of hearts with the 2 of hearts;
- you can't close by discarding a wild card.
A wild card inside a burraco makes it dirty or semi-clean, and the bonus drops: 100 or 150 points instead of 200.
The ace
In a run the ace can go before the 2 (ace-2-3) or after the king (queen-king-ace). Either way it is worth 15 points.
The cards on FantaCarte
The deck is shuffled every round with a cryptographic random number generator and every card drawn is chosen at random from those left: nobody picks the cards and nobody sees anyone else's, not even the CPU. You can choose the card back you like as you level up.
Now that you know the cards, go over the Burraco rules or, if you're just starting, read how to play Burraco.