How to play Sicilian Tarocchi

The rules of Sicilian Tarocchi in a paragraph

Tarocchi is the Italian family of tarot trick-taking games, and this is the Sicilian one: a game for points, nothing to do with fortune-telling. Three or four sit down, online here or round a real table, with the 63-card Sicilian tarot deck. Cards are dealt five at a time, and after each packet you say whether to go on, throw the hand in or play alone. Whoever ends up bidding takes the three-card monte, discards three, and plays against the others for 55 of the 109 card points. Follow suit if you can, otherwise play a trump. Then everyone counts jochi, the game points (one is a jocu): for the card points, the last trick, capturing the big trumps, and a few more.

The tarot pack and what each card is worth

The deck is 63 cards, the Tarocco Siciliano: twenty trumps numbered 20 down to 1, Miseria below the 1 as the lowest trump, the Fool, and four suits of cups, coins, swords and batons. In each suit the order runs King, Queen, Horse, Maid, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, and coins keep a 4 at the bottom. There are no aces. On the board a corner chip reads K, Q, H and M for the courts, F for the Fool, 0 for Miseria and the number on a trump, with a mark under it, the suit letter C, O, S or B.

The 20, the 1 and the Fool are worth 10 points each. Trumps 16 to 19 and the Kings are worth 5, Queens 4, Horses 3, Maids 2. Everything else, trumps 2 to 15, Miseria and the numbers, is worth 1. Trumps 16 to 20 are the arie. The board writes the points into the chip of every card worth two or more.

Points are counted in threes. Take 2 off every batch of three cards, and 1 off a leftover one or two. So trumps 20, 9 and 6 are 10 plus 1 plus 1, minus 2, which is 10. A Maid on her own is worth 1, a Maid with a small card 2. The last trick adds 5 to whoever wins it. Both sides together always come to 109, so 55 wins, and the table does the threes for you.

Three seats: five cards at a time, and what you say

The table shuffles, sets the last three cards aside as the monte and deals the rest in packets of five, so a seat holds 5, then 10, 15 and finally 20 cards. Each packet goes to every seat in turn, starting with the seat after the dealer, and play always runs to the next seat number. After every hand the deal moves on one seat. After each packet everyone speaks once in that order, the dealer last.

With 5 cards your choices are passo (pass), altre cinque (five more) or vado solo (I play alone). Say solo on five cards and it is a stata: you commit having seen only those five, so the rest of the deal goes out at once, the monte is yours, and every payment for the hand is doubled. If everyone passes, the deal is abandoned and nobody scores. Any altre cinque deals the next packet.

At 10 and 15 cards you also get pago (I will pay one jocu to abandon this deal) and prendo (I will take it). The first seat may say pago, and so may the second. Prendo comes from the second seat or the dealer once someone has said pago. If nobody says altre cinque the deal is abandoned, and a prendo collects one jocu from each pago. An altre cinque cancels all of that and deals on.

At 20 cards the monte is formed, and the dealer alone has looked at it. You can pass, say pago or prendo as before, or say vado solo, this time for a single stake. Nobody can say altre cinque now. If nobody goes solo the deal is abandoned, with the same pago and prendo payments.

Four seats: calling a partner

The first packet is five, and the only choices are passo or vado solo, which is a stata again. If all pass, two more packets go out, so everyone holds 15, and the monte is set aside. Now each seat speaks once: passo, chiamo (I call) or vado solo. A solo beats a call and ends the round, and the caller becomes an opponent. This solo is single stakes.

You do not choose the trump when you call. You name the highest trump you do not hold: the 20 if you lack it, the 19 if you hold the 20 but not the 19, and so on down. Hold the 20 and the 19 but not the 18 and you call the 18. Whoever holds that trump is your partner, and says nothing until it is played. Nobody else is told, and neither are you. If the called trump is in the monte you have no partner and play alone against three.

If all four pass, the seat with the 20 is forced to call. It takes the monte first, discards, then calls from the hand it is left with. If the 20 is in the monte, the deal is thrown in. The last section says why we force the call.

The monte, the discard and the two announcements before play

Whoever ends up bidding, soloist or caller, takes the monte. It is turned up for everyone first. The one exception is a dealer who plays alone at three seats, who picks it up unseen, having already looked. The bidder then holds 23 cards, or 18 at four seats, and discards three face down.

You may never discard a trump, the Fool or a King. Queens, Horses, Maids and the numbers are fair game, and any points in them count for your side at the end. In the rare hand with fewer than three of those, you may discard the least valuable trumps, Miseria and 2 to 15, and no more than you must.

Before the first card come two announcements, each seat asked once. The bidder can announce Scommessa, a promise that the bidder’s side will have the 20, the 1 and the Fool in its tricks at the count. It is worth one more jocu if it does and one to the others if it does not, and the button works only if the bidder’s own hand holds the 20 and the Fool. An opponent who spoke after the final bid can announce Rivanto, which doubles the last trick’s jocu, and only one Rivanto is allowed a hand. At four seats the hidden partner may not announce anything, so the partner’s Rivanto button is disabled on that screen alone.

Playing the tricks, and the Fool

The seat after the bidder leads, so the bidder plays last to the first trick. Any card can lead except the Fool. Everyone else follows the suit led if they can, plays a trump if they cannot, and plays anything if they have neither. Nobody has to beat the card before, so you may play a low card of the suit even when you could win the trick. The highest trump wins, or with no trump in the trick the highest card of the suit led. Trumps rank 20 down to 1, then Miseria. The winner leads next. That is 20 tricks at three seats and 15 at four.

A trick at three seats. The seat after the bidder leads the 7 of cups. The next seat holds cups, so it must follow and plays the 9. The third seat has no cups but has trumps, so it must play one, say trump 3. The trump beats the cups, so that seat wins the trick and leads next.

The Fool is your excuse. Play it to any trick instead of following suit or trumping, and it takes no part: it cannot win, and it never counts for the follow-suit rules. It cannot lead, except as your last card in the last trick, when the second card played fixes the suit. Until the count it sits face up beside its seat. At the count it goes to the side of the seat that played it if that side won a trick, and otherwise to the side that took the trick it was played in.

Do not keep the Fool too long. Hold it while you chase the last trick and you may have to lead it, and lose that trick.

Counting the jochi, and how a match ends

Sides are the bidder’s, with the called partner at four seats, against the rest. A side’s pile is its tricks, the Fool as settled, and for the bidder’s side the three discards. Every hand scores the Rimatura, one jocu for the side with 55 or more card points, and the Vanto, one for the side that wins the last trick, or two if Rivanto was announced. Then the extras. One for all four Kings. One for the four arie, 16 to 19, and a second if the side has the 20 as well. One for each pigliata, a counting trump, the 1 or 16 to 19, that one side played and the other took. And one for a Scommessa that came off, or to the others if it did not.

The net is the bidder’s side minus the others. At three seats the soloist wins twice the net and each opponent pays it once. At four seats in partnership each partner wins the net and each opponent pays it. Alone at four seats the soloist wins three times the net. A stata doubles everything, Scommessa and Rivanto included, but never a pago or prendo payment. It always adds up to zero.

A worked one. The soloist’s side takes the Rimatura and the Vanto and captures the 1 and the 17 from the others, and they capture the 18. That is four jochi to one, a net of three. Three seats: +6 for the soloist, 3 paid by each opponent. As a stata, +12 and 6 each. Alone at four seats, +9 and 3 each. Two partners at four, +3 each and 3 paid by each opponent. Win the last trick but lose the points with nothing else scored and it is one jocu each: nobody pays.

A match is one deal per seat, three at three seats and four at four. An abandoned deal counts as dealt, and the totals carry on. Highest total wins, and a tie at the top is shared.

How to play tarocchi online: what you press and what you see

Online, you come in one of two ways. At the computer table you sit down with two computers, or three for a four-seat hand, and they answer after a beat. In a room the host picks three or four seats and sends each person a link, the seats are named the host, guest 1, guest 2 and guest 3, and a four-seat table that is still waiting can start with three and then plays as a three-seat game. There is chat while you play.

Your hand is laid out as cards you can click or tap, trumps first, high to low, then cups, coins, swords and batons, with the Fool set apart. Each card has a corner chip, and the points are inside it when the card is worth two or more. A card the rules do not allow is dimmed, and the status line says why: follow the suit, play a trump, the Fool cannot lead. That same line says whose turn it is, and the lines above the cards say what just happened.

The announcements are buttons, and the ones the rules do not allow are switched off, with the reason beside them. The discard is select three, then confirm. Scommessa and Rivanto come up as a yes or no question. Above the cards each seat shows its name, a dealer mark, its running jochi total, how many cards it holds, its tricks and the counting cards it has captured, and a text log lists the announcements of the deal. A panel of played cards, by trump and suit, helps you keep track.

When the last trick is played the count is itemised, jocu by jocu, with each seat’s payment. Then each seat presses Next deal, until the last deal of the match, which ends on the result.

Where we chose, and where to start

The written Mineo rules leave gaps, and the sources differ in small places, so we chose. The seat after the bidder leads the first trick, as Pagat’s main text has it, though some tables let the bidder lead. The pack is the 63 cards with the 4 of coins in and no ace. Pago and prendo are offered at 10 and 15 cards, as Pagat has it. A pago nobody takes abandons the deal with no payment. There is no table talk between opponents, and the bidder’s discards are shown at the count. The dealer’s look at the monte works the same at both sizes.

On the forced call at four seats, Pagat’s main text throws the deal in whenever all four pass and lists the forced call as a variation. The Association in Catania, whose pages and rule PDFs we checked against, gives it as Dummett’s rule, notes that some circles simply reshuffle, and says forcing it avoids strings of dead deals. We force it.

We would start at the computer table with three seats. Every side is public, there is no hidden partner, and three seats speak instead of four. Nobody remembers the announcements the first time. The table switches off the ones the rules do not allow, and says why.