The rules of Truco
Truco is played two against two, partners facing, or one against one, with a pack of forty: ace to seven and the three court cards of each suit. Each player is dealt three cards. The player after the dealer is mano and plays first, and play goes round anticlockwise unless the table chose otherwise.
The hand is three tricks. Everybody plays one card to a trick and the strongest card takes it; suits do not have to be followed. Two equal cards from the two sides tie the trick. The side that takes two tricks takes the hand. A tied first trick goes to whoever takes the second; a tied second or third goes to whoever took the first.
Which card beats which depends on the game. Paulista: from the top 3, 2, ace, king, jack, queen, 7, 6, 5, 4, the suits equal; and above all of them the manilhas: a card is turned up, the vira, and the four cards of the next rank are manilhas, clubs, hearts, spades, diamonds. Mineiro: the same, with the manilhas always the 4 of clubs, the 7 of hearts, the ace of spades and the 7 of diamonds. Argentino, with the Spanish pack: the 1 of espadas, the 1 of bastos, the 7 of espadas, the 7 of oros, the threes, the twos, the 1 of copas and of oros, the 12s, 11s, 10s, the 7 of copas and of bastos, the sixes, fives and fours.
A hand is worth 1 point (2 in Mineiro). On your turn you may raise it: Truco. The next player, on the other side, accepts, turns it down, or raises again. Turned down, the callers take what the hand was worth before. Accepted, the hand is worth more, and only the side that accepted may raise it next. Paulista goes 1, 3, 6, 9, 12; Mineiro 2, 4, 8, 10, 12; Argentino 1, 2 (Truco), 3 (Retruco), 4 (Vale cuatro).
Argentino has the envido too. In the first trick, before a Truco is accepted, a player may sing Envido (2), and the other side may accept, turn it down, or raise with Envido, Real envido (3) or Falta envido (what the leader still needs to win the game). A hand’s envido is twenty and the two cards of one suit added up, the court cards counting nothing, or the highest card alone with no two of a suit; the best of each side is compared, and the mano’s side wins a tie. If the table plays flor, three cards of one suit score 3 as soon as they are dealt, and then there is no envido. A player may also go to the deck, giving the hand up: in the first trick before the envido is sung, that is one point more.
In Brazil, a side one point from the game plays its hand of eleven only if it wants to, after seeing its cards and its partner’s: for 3 (4 in Mineiro), with no raising, or it runs and the others take 1 (2). With both sides on eleven nobody may raise. The game is to 12 in Brazil, and to 30 or 15 in Argentina.