Burraco belongs to the rummy family and reached Italy from South America a little over thirty years ago. It has since become the card game most played in Italian clubs and living rooms, usually by four people in fixed partnerships, though the two-player version is just as common. One thing is worth knowing first: Burraco has no single rulebook. Tournament bodies have fixed one for competition, but home tables run on dozens of local variants, and the first sensible rule is to agree on yours before the cards go out.
Decks, the deal and the pozzetti
The game uses two full French decks including their jokers, one hundred and eight cards in all. Each player is dealt eleven cards. The dealer then sets aside two face-down packets of eleven cards, called pozzetti, builds the stock from what is left and turns one card up to start the discard pile. A pozzetto is a partnership's second hand: the first player of a side to run out of cards picks theirs up and carries on without the turn being interrupted. The two-player game works the same way, one pozzetto each. Pozzetto size is where houses differ most — eleven is the tournament figure, but tables using eighteen or twenty to stretch the hand out are easy to find.
Besides the four jokers, the twos are wild as well; they are called pinelle. The most widely followed rules let a pinella stand only for a card of its own suit inside a run, while plenty of groups let it replace anything at all.
Melds and the shape of a turn
There are two kinds of meld. A set is three or more cards of the same rank in different suits. A run is three or more consecutive cards of one suit, with the ace allowed above the king or below the two, but never in the middle. Melds are laid in front of the partnership and either partner may extend them; opponents never can. A turn has three parts — draw, meld, discard. The draw is what gives Burraco its character, because you may take either the top card of the stock or the entire discard pile, not just its top card.
Clean and dirty burracos
A meld that reaches seven cards becomes a burraco and earns a bonus of its own. Made entirely of natural cards it is clean and worth two hundred points; if it contains a joker or a pinella it is dirty and worth one hundred. A dirty burraco can be cleaned later by swapping the wild card for the real one, and it then takes the full bonus. Many groups also recognise the half-clean burraco, where the wild sits at one end of a run and could be moved: where it counts it is usually worth one hundred and fifty, and where it does not it is simply dirty. Settle that one in advance, because it can decide an entire hand.
Going out
To go out, a side must have taken its pozzetto, completed at least one burraco and then shed every card, ending with a final discard. Going out is worth one hundred points. If the stock runs dry first, the hand simply stops and the cards are counted. A side that has still not picked up its pozzetto when the opponents go out loses one hundred points under the most common rule, though some groups only withhold the bonus. Going out without a final discard is a variant too: where it is allowed it often carries an extra bonus, and elsewhere it is not permitted at all.
Positive and negative hands
At the end of a hand each side adds up the cards it has melded on the table and subtracts the cards still held by its two players. A joker is thirty points, a pinella twenty, an ace fifteen, the face cards and the ten, nine and eight are ten each, and everything from the seven down to the three is five. The bonuses go on top of that: two hundred per clean burraco, one hundred per dirty one, one hundred for going out and minus one hundred for an untaken pozzetto. Because held cards are subtracted, a bad hand can finish below zero — most often for the player who sat on a joker and a pinella and was caught by a fast finish.
The 2005-point target
Hands are repeated until a side reaches two thousand and five points. The game is not cut off mid-hand: the current deal is played out and the higher total wins. Explanations for why the figure is 2005 rather than 2000 do not agree with each other, and it is a convention either way — plenty of groups play to a round 2000, or to 1000 for a shorter evening.
Keeping score with Score Buddy
Score Buddy sets Burraco to a target of 2005 points, with the highest total winning. The quick buttons +100, +200 and +500 are the numbers that come up again and again: the closing bonus, the clean burraco and the rough size of a whole hand. The plus and minus buttons move in steps of five, because every Burraco score is a multiple of five, and for a hand that finished below zero the negative toggle flips the sign before you confirm it. Playing in fours, add two entries named after the partnerships rather than four players: partners' points belong together and the standings stay readable. Each card shows how far a side still is from 2005 and marks the win as soon as the target is passed; New game then files the finished game in your history and records the win.