BRISCOLA!

Nonno Bruno threw down the ace of diamonds, a bold move that appeared to give away 11 points to his adversaries, Zi' Nicola and cousin Joey. Ricuzzo's heart sank. "No, Zi' Nicola will play a high trump card to beat my paltry four of clubs," he thought. "And there goes the game." Zi' Nicola hesitated. He looked at Nonno Bruno, his face clearly registering both anger and disappointment.

"Caspita! Ma voi vi ricordate tutto!" ("Good heavens! But you remember everything!"), Zi' Nicola said as he slammed down the three of hearts. Ricuzzo's sinking spirits revived as he realized he and Nonno Bruno would win that hand and the game! He played his trump and gleefully gathered up the cards. Nonno Bruno then threw down his remaining two cards, as did Zi' Nicola. Ricuzzo and Joey looked down and, realizing that no one could beat Nonno Bruno's cards, they too folded.

The post-mortem analysis of Nonno Bruno's fine play ended with his parting advice: "Ma, è semplicissimo: per giocare bene a briscola, si deve sempre ricordare le carte già giocate. Così vincerai sempre." ("But it is very simple to play briscola well: you must always remember the cards already played. That way you always win.")

"Ricuzzo" is a nickname for Enrico and I was the ten-year-old boy playing briscola with his grandfather that day so long ago. It was the summer of 1941, during one of my family's frequent visits to my grandfather's modest, cold-water flat on Hester Street in New York City's Little Italy.

That flat consisted of three small rooms, lined up like railroad cars. The kitchen had three doors. One led to a small toilet (truly a water closet with a pull-chain flush); another door opened to a somewhat larger closet containing the bathtub (used also by three other families on that floor); and the third led to two small bedrooms. Here, Nonno Bruno had lived with his wife, Anna for fifteen years.

That kitchen was the center of our family's activities during my youth. Everyone in that large family tried to meet in Nonna's kitchen at least once a month--all six children, their wives and the fifteen grandchildren. We laughed, we shouted, and we ate lots of food--pasta with ragù, brasciola, strong espresso, and sweet, crispy pizzelle--good southern Italian peasant fare. And after those marathon meals, we always played briscola.

Briscola is one of several traditional Italian card games that we, the sons and daughters of immigrant families, learned from our fathers and grandfathers. For me, those games are part of our oral tradition. We played with decks of American poker cards, but first we removed all the 8s, 9s and 10s, creating a deck of 40 cards, the number necessary for playing briscola (as well as some other popular Italian card games). The "picture cards" - the Queen, Jack and King - were then given the numerical values 8, 9 and 10, respectively.

Thirty years later, during my first trip to Italy in 1970, I saw a deck of Italian cards for the first time. I had stopped to watch some men on a street corner play a game of briscola outside a small café in Piazza San Marco in Venice. They were using intricately decorated, tarot-like playing cards (carte da gioco).

THE CARDS AND THEIR HISTORY

Nobody knows for certain where these beautiful cards came from. One of the earliest mentions of them in Italy is found in Florence, where the archives hold an act dated 1376 in which card-playing is identified for the first time. It was labeled a "new" game. Who invented these cards remains a mystery. Some experts say that they were imported from China because a Chinese/Italian dictionary published in 1687 illustrates 12th-century Chinese playing cards that are similar to the Italian cards. Others believe the cards came from India and were developed from chess.

However, one fact which everyone seems to agree on is that playing cards were introduced into Europe by the Arabs at the end of the 14th century. This conclusion is supported by the fact that Italians first called playing cards naibi, a word of indisputable Arab origin.

Today, playing cards are roughly classified under two main types: "Italian," consisting of 40-card decks, or "French", consisting of 52-card decks. But the phrase "Italian playing cards" is no more than a general term. Italy has 16 recognized decks of regional playing cards (carte da gioco regionali)--Sicilian, Florentine, Bolognese, etc. Each regional deck of cards has its own highly decorative design, and is further classified according to the major influence of one of three foreign powers that ruled parts of Italy in bygone centuries--Spanish, French or Germanic.

The playing cards most commonly used throughout all of Italy are the napoletane, or Neapolitan cards, whose design is decidedly Spanish in influence. The napoletane bastone, or club, design must always bear a bright yellow decoration depicting an oak leaf.

A deck of Italian cards is composed of four semi, or suits: coppe (cups, corresponding to hearts), denari (coins or money, corresponding to diamonds), bastoni (cudgels, corresponding to clubs), and spade(swords, corresponding to spades).

Some card scholars believe that the four suits reflect the four classes of medieval Italian society. The denari symbolize the merchants who had money; coppe, the clergy who used chalices to celebrate mass; bastoni, the peasants who used cudgels to herd their animals; and spade, the nobility who girded themselves with swords.

THE ORIGINS OF BRISCOLA

Today, briscola is considered by many to be a traditional Italian game, but the truth is that an early version of it seems to have originated in Holland, where it became quite popular by the end of the 16th century. The game then passed through France where, with some modification, it was called Brusquembille (ancestor of two other French card games, Briscan and Bezique) and was played with a 32-card deck.

Eventually, it arrived in Italy. It soon became a much-favored card game played with the customary Italian deck of 40 cards. The game had been so completely modified that, for all intents and purposes, it was considered to be an Italian game.

Italians play several varieties of briscola. It can be played between two people, or, more commonly, two sets of partners. It can also be played among three players, but in this case, one must first remove the card of lowest value in the briscola deck, the deuce of any suit. There is a five-man variation called briscola chiamata (declaration briscola). Finally, another variation, briscolone, is a no-trump variety usually played between two players.

HOW TO PLAY BRISCOLA

Briscola is a bridge-like game--the word means "trump," and refers to the trump suit and the trump cards. It is played with a deck of 40 cards, either the traditional "Italian" cards which contain four suits of ten cards each (coppe, denari, bastoni and spade), or the "French" cards. In briscola, cards have points used to calculate the final score at the end of the game, and numerical equivalents that establish who wins each trick. The scoring in briscola is as follows:

• Asso (Ace): 11 Points (numerical equivalent = 11 points)
• Tre (Trey): 10 points (numerical equivalent = 10 points)
• Re (King): 4 points (numerical equivalent = 10 points)
• Cavallo (Horseman) or Regina (Queen): 3 points (numerical equivalent = 9 points)
• Donna (Lady) or Fante (Valet): 2 points (numerical equivalent = 8 points)
• Carte numeriche (numbered cards) 2, 4, 5, 6, 7 = 0 points

In southern and central Italy, the picture cards depict una donna (a lady) whose numerical equivalent is eight, and un cavallo (a horseman) whose numerical value is nine. In northern Italy, the corresponding picture cards depict un fante (a valet) whose numerical value is eight, and la regina (queen) whose numerical value is nine. Occasional confusion is encountered because the lady is mistakenly considered to correspond to the queen.

Within the same suit (either trump or non-trump), the card with a higher ranking always beats the card of lower rank or value. Yet, whenever two non-trump cards of different suits are played, the first card played always wins regardless of its relative ranking or point value. If, instead, one card is a trump, it always wins, regardless of its relative ranking or point value.

As noted above, briscola can be played with any number of participants. For the sake of simplification, the most popular version--a four-player, two-team game--will be described here, although the same rules are applicable for two- and three-player games.

Before the game begins, one of the four players (as a courtesy, usually, the host) opens a new deck of cards and shuffles them thoroughly. He places one card, face up, in front of each player; the player with the highest ranking card becomes the dealer. (In case of a tie, a second card is placed in front of each tied player.)

The dealer takes the deck of cards, reshuffles them, places the deck in front of the player to his left who must "cut" them. The dealer then distributes three cards to each of the four players (either singly or all three at once), in a counterclockwise rotation, beginning with the player on his immediate right.

He then uncovers the thirteenth card and places it prominently in the center of the table. This card, regardless of its rank, identifies the trump suit, referred to as briscola. The remaining cards are usually placed, face down, as a stack on top of the trump card, but not obscuring it.

The game begins with the player to the dealer's immediate right, and goes around the table until the dealer has played last. Each round of four cards played constitutes una giocata (a hand). The winner of each hand gathers all four cards and places them, face down, on his side of the table (one of the partners is usually selected to accumulate all the cards won by either partner).

The winner of each hand is determined solely by the rank of the cards; of course, trump cards win over non-trump cards. The winner of each hand then draws one card from the deck. Then the others also draw one card, in sequence. Play continues until all the cards have been drawn.

Once the final cards are drawn, just before playing il gioco finale (the final hand), team members are permitted to exchange cards to learn what cards their partners possess. (In parts of Italy, more than one exchange may be permitted. Recently, I played with a group in Cattolica [ARTICLE LINK], a resort near Rimini, on the Adriatic Riviera, where cards were exchanged twice, once before the second hand, once before the final hand.) This traditional exchange of hands allows the two partners to develop the final strategy together and enables the stronger partner to direct the play of the other.

At the end of the game the total number of points is added up for each team, using the point values for the cards delineated above. At this time, trump cards have no greater value. As there are 30 points for each suit in a deck of briscola cards, the maximum number of points is 120. (It is extremely rare for a team to score un cappotto (a "skunk"), scoring 120 points in the first game.) The winner of the game is the team which scores 61 or more points. The winner of una partita (a set) is the first team to win two games.

BRISCOLA'S SECRET LANGUAGE

One of the most colorful features of briscola is the secret signals and code words that partners use to direct the game. These signals and conversation are permitted during the game, except for the first hand, when it is severely forbidden. I have never been able to discover the reason for this exclusion, since the rest of the game is always full of non-stop banter, colorful exclamations and traditional curses.

As the game progresses, nearly everyone develops a variety of tics. When one partner wishes to tell the other that he has specific cards, he uses pre-established tics and gestures when his opponents are not looking. Although there are probably regional differences, briscola champion Alderano Minelli notes that there are a series of recognized "secret" signals.

Of course, some players have been known to use non-traditional, "secret signals," and no rule precludes this option. For the past four years, this writer has been part of a Circolo della Briscola, or Briscola Club, in the Washington, D.C. area, consisting of nearly 50 Americans of Italian heritage and several Italians employed by Italian companies with offices in the vicinity. We play once a month; award a briscola tie to the monthly winner, who wears it until the next session; publish our own newsletter, the Briscola News, and have recently designed a torneo di briscola (briscola tournament), the monthly scores of which will be tallied in December. The winner will receive an engraved cup.

With briscola, our club has rediscovered a game our forefathers brought to America at the turn of the century. When we gather to play, I think about the flat on Hester Street, my big family, and Nonno Bruno. He was my hero and mentor, who taught me to remember the cards - and so much more.

[Editorial note: This archival photo was included in the original article by the Editor, presumable because Caruso and I share the same first name, Enrico. However, I was never enlightened as to the real reason; perhaps it was to illustrate that the game of briscola has been played ubiquitously by all Italians since the 14th century!]

Enrico Davoli, M.D., is Emeritus Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C. and Chairman Emeritus of the NIAF Medical/Dental Council. He thanks the Circolo della Briscola for the inspiration to write this article. He also thanks Anna and Ruggero Perugini and Giorgio Maggi for providing the sources of much of the historical information. AMBASSADOR magazine 1996

ricuzzo@mac.com

www.briscola-news.com