Madrasso, the Venetian card game for four

What Madrasso is, and where it is played

Pagat.com calls Madrasso perhaps the most popular card game in Venice and the region around it, and says it has practically replaced an older local game, Scarabocion, over the last fifty years. Italian Wikipedia places it in the Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia. You will also see it spelled Mandrasso and Magrasso. The rules we follow are John McLeod’s translation of a description Paolo Valentini made for the 1997 convention of the International Playing-Card Society.

Cards rank and count as they do in Briscola, ace first and then the three, and there is a trump suit. But you have to follow suit, as in Tressette, and that is what makes it a game of memory: a seat that cannot follow shows the whole table it holds none of the suit. Pagat calls the technique “quite complex and somewhat reminiscent of Bridge”, with no bidding to help you, only your own hand and what has been played. Expect a post-mortem after every deal.

Four seats, forty cards

Madrasso takes four people in two fixed partnerships, partners facing each other, and it only exists at four, so there is no choosing how many sit down. A room gives you three links, one per empty seat, and it is four people every time: the table puts no computers in a room. With no three friends to hand, the computer table seats you with a computer partner and two computer opponents.

The 40 cards are an ordinary deck without the eights, nines and tens. The Italian pack has a cavallo, a horse, between the king and the jack. Here the queen stands in for the cavallo and the jack for the fante, and you play with the ordinary faces.

Top to bottom in each suit: ace, three, king, queen, jack, seven, six, five, four, two. The ace is worth 11 points, the three 10, the king 4, the queen 3, the jack 2, and the rest nothing. That is 30 a suit and 120 in the pack, and the last trick of a deal adds 10, so every deal is worth exactly 130. Aces and threes are the carichi, the picture cards the punti.

The trump card, and the seven you can swap

Everybody gets ten cards, and the dealer’s last card is turned face up. Its suit is trump for the deal. It stays in the dealer’s hand, and the dealer may play it whenever they like. The seat after the dealer leads the first trick, whoever wins a trick leads the next, and the deal moves one seat on after every hand. The table draws who deals first at random.

Then the seven of trumps gets a trick of its own. Whoever holds it may swap it for the turned-up card, but only on the first trick, only on their own turn before they play, and only when the turned-up card is an ace, three, king, queen or jack. Pagat says the swap is only ever made when the turned-up card is higher than the seven, so the table simply enforces that. The dealer cannot swap with their own card, which would change nothing. After a swap the seven lies face up in the dealer’s hand and everybody is told. Nobody is told in advance who could swap: the button shows on the holder’s screen only.

Following suit, and what you do not have to do

If you hold a card of the suit led, you play one. That is the only duty. You never have to beat the cards already down, and if you hold none of the suit you may play anything: a trump, or the card you most want rid of. The highest trump in the trick takes it. With no trump in it, the highest card of the suit led does, and a card of any other suit never wins. A trump lead is followed with trumps if you have them, since that is only following suit.

A worked trick. Hearts are trump. The king of clubs is led and the next seat plays the seven of clubs. The third seat has no clubs and plays the five of hearts. The fourth seat holds the ace of clubs and no other club, so it must play it, and it cannot beat a trump. The five of hearts takes the trick, and the side that played it collects 15 points: 4, 0, 0 and 11. An ace lost to a five, because the suit had to be followed. That is why aces get led early.

Scoring to 777, the call-out and the cappotto

After each deal each side counts the points in the tricks it took, and the side that took the last trick adds 10. The two counts always come to 130, and the totals run on from deal to deal. Barring a cappotto, below, a match runs at least ten deals: nobody can win on points until the tenth has been played. After it, a side on 777 or more wins. Ten deals hold 1,300 points, and two sides cannot both reach 777 out of that, since two 777s make 1,554.

If neither side is there, you play on. From the eleventh deal, the moment a side wins a trick that lifts its running total to 777, the last-trick 10 included, that side wins on the spot. By pagat’s rules a person who has just won a trick declares that their side has 777 and is out, si chiama fuori, and if the count says otherwise the other side wins instead. Here the table does the counting and makes the call for you. Twelve deals hold 1,560 points, more than two 777s, so a match never gets past the twelfth.

The other way out is a cappotto. Take all ten tricks of a deal and the match is yours at once, however far behind you were. Taking all 130 points is not enough: if the other side wins a single trick of four worthless cards, there is no cappotto.

One rule set, and where the others differ

Nobody owns the rules of Madrasso, and the sources part company in a few places, so we follow one and say where the others go. It is the pagat.com description. The Italian Wikipedia article is our cross-check, and it carries a banner saying its sources are missing or insufficient, so where the two disagree, pagat wins.

The difference that changes play: when you cannot follow suit, you may play any card. Pagat’s main text says so, and pagat cites Giampaolo Dossena’s book of Italian card games for it. The Italian Wikipedia article, and many people who play it, say you must trump if you can, even when your partner is winning the trick. That is another game entirely, and not this one.

Smaller ones. In the Italian Wikipedia version the holder of the trump seven leads the first trick and deals the second hand, under the saying “el sette roba e zoga”, the seven swaps and plays. In pagat’s the seat after the dealer leads, as it does here. That article also lists a short Madrasso of seven deals from 195 points each, and a game for three. Neither is here. Pagat has it dealt and played anticlockwise. We go the way this table always goes. It is the same game in a mirror.

Two more are ours. Pagat’s penalty for playing off suit while holding the suit is called fa cassone and hands the other side 130 points. It never comes up here, because the table will not take the card, and says why when you press it. And Venetian play allows no signals and no talking during a hand. Chat and voice are why you sent the links, so they stay on. For the old way, say nothing through a hand; the table will not stop you.

What the table does, and what it does not

Pagat lists Windows programs you can download for Madrasso. Nothing to install here: the cards are dealt as soon as the page loads. Sit down against the computer, or send the links for a room, with chat while you play and voice if the person who made the table switched it on. Once somebody has sat down, a table stays open for 48 hours after the last move, and the menu page keeps a short list of the tables your browser is sitting at.

The board says whose turn it is, which suit is trump and what the dealer’s face-up card is, the trick in play and the last one with who took it, each side’s total against 777, and how many tricks each side has taken this deal. A card you cannot play is dimmed, and pressing it says why. What it does not do is count for you. The board draws no log of earlier tricks and does not show the card points of the deal so far, because remembering what has gone is the game. When a deal ends it itemises the points, and you press Next deal.

The computers see only what their seat could: their own hand, the turned-up card, the cards played this deal and the trick in front of them. A computer takes the seven swap whenever it can and has no randomness in it. It can be read, and reading it is how you learn the game. The computer table keeps nothing between visits. It is free, with the odd discreet ad, and asks for no account.