Scopa
Scopa is the Italian fishing game, and it is the only game on this site where you take cards off a shared table rather than from each other. Three cards each, four face up between you, and a turn is one card played: it captures a table card of the same value, or a set of them that adds up to it, or it stays there and waits. Clearing the table is a sweep. At the end of each hand you score for most cards, most diamonds, the seven of diamonds and the best prime, and the first to eleven points over as many hands as it takes wins the game.
The pack and the deal
- Two players, and a pack of forty cards: ace, two, three, four, five, six, seven, jack, queen and king in each suit. This site plays the French-suited forty, which is the standard pack with the eights, nines and tens taken out.
- The cards have values for capturing: the ace is one, the numbers are worth their number, the jack is eight, the queen nine and the king ten.
- Three cards each, dealt one at a time, and then four cards face up on the table. The rest are stacked face down.
- If three or four kings come up among those four, the hand is thrown in and dealt again by the same dealer, because with three kings showing a sweep is impossible.
- The non-dealer plays first. After every hand the deal passes to the other player.
Playing a card
- Play one card from your hand, face up to the table.
- If it has the same value as a card on the table, it takes that card. If more than one card matches, you choose which one to take.
- If no single card matches but a set of two or more adds up to your card, it takes that set. If more than one set adds up, you choose which.
- If nothing matches, your card stays on the table and can be captured later.
- You take the captured cards and the card you played, and keep them in a pile face down.
Three rules the table cannot show you
- If your card can capture, you must capture. You may not leave it on the table to avoid giving your opponent a sweep.
- If a single card and a set both match, you must take the single card, not the set. A five on a table holding a five, an ace and a four takes the five.
- You choose freely which card to play, though. You may play a card that captures nothing even when another card in your hand would have captured.
Sweeps
- If your card takes everything on the table and leaves it empty, that is a sweep, and it is worth a point at the end of the hand.
- The table being empty means the next card played cannot capture, so it starts a new layout.
- The very last card of a hand never counts as a sweep, even when it does clear the table.
Running out of cards
- When you have both played your three, you are each dealt three more. No further cards are ever added to the table.
- That happens six times over, so a hand is thirty-six cards played, eighteen each.
- When the last card has been played, any cards still on the table go to whoever captured most recently. They count, but they are not a capture and they are not a sweep.
Scoring a hand
- One point for most cards in your pile. Twenty each is a tie and neither of you scores it.
- One point for most diamonds, which are the coins in the Italian pack. Five each is a tie and neither scores.
- One point for the seven of diamonds, the settebello.
- One point for the best prime: your best card in each of the four suits, added up on a scale of its own where a seven is twenty-one, a six eighteen, an ace sixteen, a five fifteen, a four fourteen, a three thirteen, a two twelve and a court card ten.
- You cannot score the prime at all unless you hold at least one card in every suit, however good your four best cards are.
- A tie for the prime scores nobody, and because the scale is what is compared, two different sets of cards can tie.
- And one point for every sweep you made.
How the game ends
- Hands are played until somebody reaches eleven points. That is usually four hands and about a hundred and forty cards played, so it is a longer game than most on this site.
- If you both pass eleven in the same hand, the higher total wins.
- If you are level at eleven or more, another hand is played to break it.
- A resignation or a missed deadline ends the game against that player. Every move has the same deadline, chosen when the table is made.
Worth knowing before you start
- Watch what you leave behind. A table that adds up to a card your opponent might hold is a sweep waiting to happen, and the sweep is the point you give away most easily.
- The diamonds are worth two of the five points between them, counting the settebello, so a capture that takes a diamond is usually better than a bigger one that does not.
- Sevens are the best cards in the prime and sixes are next, which is why a seven is worth taking even when the capture is small.
- Playing a card that captures nothing is often right. It is the only way to avoid handing over a sweep when everything you hold would clear the table.
The rules here are the basic game as set out at pagat.com, maintained by John McLeod, which is where this site takes its card game rules. Scopa has many variants and this site plays none of them: no ace taking the whole table, no capturing to a total of fifteen, no extra point for the king of diamonds, and no claiming the game early. The Italian pack has cups, coins, swords and batons with a Fante, a Cavallo and a Re; much of Italy plays with the standard pack stripped of eights, nines and tens, and Pagat notes that an international fifty-two with the tens, nines and eights removed does the same job. That is what this site ships, so the diamonds are the coins and the queen stands where the horse would.