How to Play Italian Card Game - Briscola

Hey! Welcome to watchmojo.com. I am your host Melissa and today I am going to teach you the basics of an Italian card game called Briscola or as many people refer to it as Brisk. Okay so first things first, we are going to go over how much each of the cards are actually worth. Now this is very important to remember because the cards have different values and if you don't remember this, you are going to be giving away points like there is no tomorrow during the game.

So let's over here with La Donna which is actually worth 2 points. Then we have Il Cavallo which is 3 points. We move onto Il Re which is 4 points, then we have the Threes which are actually worth 10 points and then finally we have the most valued cards which are the Aces and those are 11 points. Now naturally other cards, they are totally pointless.

After shuffling the deck, you deal each player three cards. In this case we are putting in two. Once you have dealt everyone their cards, you turn the next card face up and place it next to the rest of the pile. Now this card becomes the brisk. Now what's the brisk? Essentially this means that every card of this suit for this game is the high card. So now the first person to play is the person to the right of the dealer so that she places one of her cards.

Now I place one of my cards down and in this case Christine takes the cards, because her card is higher than mine. Now since she won that hand she actually takes the first card from the pile and so do I. Now she plays again since she won the previous hand. Now I win this hand because I am using a brisk to pick up her 10 points. So now since I won this hand, I take the first card from the pile and now the game continues like this until all the cards are finished.

So now to make things a little bit more clear we are going to go over the three big rules; the first being high card wins. So if we both play the same suit, the higher card wins. Now in this case La Donna beats the seven. So as another example, in this case we have the Three which is worth ten points which beats the 6. So now the second rule is to follow a suit. Once the first player plays their card, you try to beat this card with the same suit. Now let's just say I don't have any of this suit. So I throw down any other card. These cards automatically go to the first player.

Now the exception to this rule is rule number three, where the brisk always wins. So now even if Christine plays them over high cards I can still beat it with a low ranking brisk, why? Because the brisk always wins. So now at the end of the game you count points. There is a total of 120 points to be had between the players and whoever has the most wins the game. So there you have it, you know the basics of Brisk now all you have to do is go out there and play.


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