Spizzichino card game: Tressette for two, online

Spizzichino, Tressette in due, and the game we deal

Pagat, John McLeod's card games site and the source we follow, files this as Spizzichino, or Tressette in due. Its page, last updated in October 2022, draws on Vitantonio Lozupone's Il Libro del Tressette e Giochi Affini (Milan, 1981) and on notes from Paolo Ronzoni and Jean Maillard, and it describes two ways of cutting four-person Tressette down to two. In the first you hold ten cards and two face-up packets of five, and can pluck a 3, 2 or ace off a packet. In the second, half-deck Tressette for two, each of you gets ten cards and the other twenty lie face down as the stock, the monte, which you draw from after every trick. We deal the second, not the packets.

Pagat says the names are no longer, and maybe never were, used consistently, and that according to some correspondents the second version is now the more widespread. Its explanation of the name, hedged with a perhaps, is pizzicare, to pluck. Pagat calls Tressette a "famous Italian card game" and lists this as its version for two, though we have no count that would let us call it the most popular card game played in Italy, or the hottest card game right now. One search tip: the bare name is also on a make of cymbals, so add "card game".

The deck: forty cards, threes high, no trumps

Take an ordinary 52-card deck and pull out the 8s, 9s and 10s. That leaves forty, the Italian deck in ordinary faces. The Italian suits, swords, batons, cups and coins, are here spades, clubs, hearts and diamonds, and the re, cavallo and fante are the king, queen and jack. Pagat says many regions of Italy use a French-suited pack like this.

High to low in every suit the order is 3, 2, ace, king, queen, jack, 7, 6, 5, 4. A 3 beats an ace. No suit is ever trump. Pagat's Tressette page says some people in the south swap the queen and the jack. We do not.

A hand: ten cards, a stock of twenty, a draw after every trick

The dealer gives ten cards each, in packets of five, and stacks the other twenty face down. The dealer's opponent leads any card. The other seat must follow suit if it can, and throws anything if it cannot. The higher card of the suit led wins, and nobody has to beat the card led. Say you lead the 5 of clubs and they have no clubs, so they throw the 3 of hearts on it. Your 5 wins, since a card of another suit never wins however high, and you take both cards, a third of a point for their 3. The winner leads next.

Then the draw. Winner first, each player takes the top card of the stock, shows it to the other and puts it in their hand. Ten tricks empty the stock, and the last ten are played from hands that shrink to nothing, twenty tricks a hand. In our opinion the shown card is the best thing about it: every draw tells you one card they hold, and tells them one of yours. The busso and volo calls of four-person Tressette, signals between partners, are not here, because nobody is your partner.

Buongiochi: bonus points for 3s, 2s and aces

The 3s, 2s and aces are the honours. Four of one rank is 4 points, three of one rank is 3, and a napoletana, the 3, 2 and ace of one suit, is 3. Pagat gives the timing. Immediately before the first trick you score whatever your original ten cards make. After that, only a card you have just drawn can make a combination, and it has to be part of it. You cannot keep one back for later. The cards may be ones you have already declared. Say you have scored three aces for 3 and played none of them. The fourth ace turns up in a draw, and Pagat has you declare four aces for 4.

A worked deal. Say your ten cards include the 3, 2 and ace of hearts and the 2 of each other suit. That is a napoletana in hearts for 3 and four 2s for 4, so 7 points from one deal, declared as you play your first card. Pagat's page for four-person Tressette uses the same pair, a napoletana in cups and four twos, as its example of a 7. The points go on your match score at once, and a hand like that is a third of a 21-point match.

Counting in thirds, and how a match ends

An ace is a whole point, and each 3, 2, king, queen and jack is a third of one, so you count in thirds: an ace is three of them. The last trick is a whole point too, three more. That makes 35 thirds a hand, eleven and two thirds. Pagat says fractions are rounded down and the card points the two players score always add up to 11. Say one player finishes with 17 thirds in tricks and takes the last trick as well. That is 17 plus 3, 20 thirds, six points. The other has 15 thirds, five points. Six and five make 11.

Card points go on top of the buongiochi already in each total. When a hand is counted and somebody has reached the target, the higher total wins. Pagat has you agree a target of 21, 31, 41 or 51, and at our table the host picks how long a match runs from those four.

What we chose where Pagat is silent

Pagat says you may declare buongiochi. We declare them for you, with your first card and after any draw that completes one, because a combination cannot be held back and hiding one gains nothing. Italian sources are not settled on this. Italian Wikipedia says in one place that nothing may be declared after the third trick, and in another that with two people you may declare all game long and must do it as soon as you can, showing the card you drew. We play Pagat's timing, and the automatic part follows the second line.

Everyone sees what was declared. Four of a rank names the rank, three of a rank names the rank and the suit that is missing, and a napoletana names its suit. That is the rule on Pagat's page for four, and the two-person page is silent on it, so a declaration tells the other seat exactly which cards you hold. Several combinations can be declared together and one card can serve in more than one. That is Pagat's four-person example, not the two-person page's, and four of a rank scores 4, never 3 plus 4.

The rest is ours. The first dealer is drawn at random and the deal alternates after that, with no cut, since the server shuffles. A match is decided only when a hand is counted, so buongiochi that carry you past the target wait for the card points, and if both of you finish at or past it and level, another hand is dealt. Each seat's running card points are on show to both of you.

Spizzichino card game online, free, with the computer or a friend

The rules pages for it, Pagat's among them, explain the game and stop there. This one deals you a hand. At the computer table you sit against one computer, one hand at a time, and it answers after a beat. Press Next hand when a hand is counted. Or the host makes a table for two, picks how long, and sends a link, with voice if the host switches it on. A room is two people and no computer, and the computer table keeps nothing between visits but your high contrast setting.

The board says whose move it is, what just happened, and each seat's buongiochi and card points, and it dims a card you cannot play and tells you why. Cards the other seat has seen are marked in your hand. The computer counts the cards played, the cards you drew and showed and the ones you declared. It cannot see the rest of your hand, but once the stock is gone the count leaves your hand only one way to be, and it plays the last ten tricks knowing it. It has no dice in it. Nothing rides on color alone, and the computer table has a high contrast switch. There is surely a Tressette app somewhere. Here you open a page and send a link: free, no account, no download, with the occasional discreet ad.