Terziglio: the Calabresella card game, Tressette for three
Tressette for three. Bid to play alone against the other two, and a 3 beats an ace.
One game, two names, and where it comes from
Pagat, John McLeod’s card games site and the source we follow, files it as Calabresella, also known as Terziglio. Its Tressette page turns the names round and calls Terziglio "an excellent game for three". Wikipedia glosses Calabresella as "the little Calabrian game", and the Italian dictionary Treccani takes terziglio from the Spanish tresillo, a diminutive of tres, three.
It is old: Wikipedia, citing Giampaolo Dossena’s encyclopedia of games, puts one of its earliest references in 1822, and the Italian rules site cavallore.it calls it widespread in Italy, known by many names, Calabrisella and Fischione among them. We will not call it the most popular card game played in Italy, because we have no count. What we will say is what changes from four-person Tressette. Nobody is a fixed partner, since the bids settle who plays alone every hand, and a bid can win you the monte, four spare cards to swap into. In our opinion that makes it the one to reach for when there are exactly three of you.
The deck: forty cards, threes high, no trumps
Take a 52-card deck and pull out the 8s, 9s and 10s. That leaves forty, the Italian deck in ordinary faces. The Italian suits are swords, batons, cups and coins, and here they are spades, clubs, hearts and diamonds in that order, with king, queen and jack standing in for re, cavallo and fante.
Then the order, which is Tressette’s and the odd part: 3, 2, ace, king, queen, jack, 7, 6, 5, 4, high to low. A 3 beats an ace, an ace beats a king, a jack beats a 7, and no suit is ever trump. Pagat’s Tressette page says some people in the south of Italy swap the queen and the jack. We do not.
The auction: chiamo, solo, solissimo
Twelve cards each, dealt in packets of four, and the last four go face down in the middle as the monte. Play goes round to the right, counter-clockwise. You get one chance each, the seat after the dealer first and the dealer last: pass, or bid higher than the bid before. Low to high the bids are chiamo, solo and solissimo, and solissimo ends the bidding. Say the first seat passes, the second bids chiamo and the dealer bids solo. Solo is higher, so the dealer plays alone and the other two are partners for that hand. If all three pass, the cards are thrown in and the next seat deals.
The bid is a promise about the monte. With chiamo you name a card, rank and suit, usually a high one you are missing. An opponent who holds it passes it to you face up, and if it is in the monte nothing passes. Then comes the exchange: the monte is turned face up for everyone and joins your hand, so you hold sixteen cards, or seventeen with a passed one. You give one card back, face up, to whoever passed yours, and put four face down as a new monte. Solo is the same without the call. Solissimo uses no monte at all: nobody sees it until the count.
Scoring: card values in thirds, and what a win pays
You count in thirds, because an ace is a whole point and each 3, 2, king, queen and jack is only a third of one. The last trick is a whole point too, and whoever wins it takes the monte. That makes eleven and two thirds, fractions are dropped, and the soloist needs six. On the board it is 35 thirds a hand, and 18 wins it. Seventeen is five and two thirds, which is five, and not enough. Exactly one side reaches 18, so every hand has a winning side.
The stakes are game points, 1 for chiamo, 2 for solo and 4 for solissimo, paid by each opponent. Say you bid solo and finish on 20 thirds, six whole points. You win, both opponents pay you 2, and you are four up and they are two down each. Finish on 17 and it runs the other way. Two bonuses multiply the stake. Cappotto, taking all twelve tricks or losing all twelve, doubles it. Stramazzo triples it: the losing side does win a trick, but the cards in its tricks add up to under a whole point.
One trick, and what the game is about
The seat after the dealer leads, except after solissimo, when the soloist does. If you hold the suit that was led, you must follow it. If you do not, throw anything. The highest card of the led suit takes the trick and leads the next one, twelve tricks in all. Say a 7 of clubs is led, the next seat plays the ace of clubs, and the third has no clubs and throws the 2 of hearts. The ace wins, and the trick is worth four thirds: three for the ace and one for the 2. The 7 is worth nothing.
Pagat says the aim is to capture aces and to take the last trick, and that the last trick is hard to guarantee since nothing is trump. That is what we like best about it. An ace is a whole point, the last trick is a whole point, and the monte rides on it, so you can play a hand well and still lose it on the twelfth card.
What we chose where the sources are silent or differ
We follow Pagat, and read it against Wikipedia. Pagat gives no target score. Wikipedia and Treccani both say 21, so that is the long match. A match here is first to 7 points unless the host picks 11 or 21. The two shorter ones are ours, and so is the race: every stake moves all three scores, up and down, and the first seat to reach the target wins. The Italian site cavallore.it agrees on the deck, the ranking, the counting and the monte, but deals in packets of three where Pagat says four, and keeps score in plain plus-two and minus-one units without Pagat’s stakes of 1, 2 and 4.
Some rules are ours, because the sources are silent or would make the table worse. Following suit is on Pagat’s Tressette page, on Wikipedia and on cavallore.it, though not on the Calabresella page. The first dealer is drawn at random, as cavallore.it has it, and a tie at the top of a match plays another hand, which is ours. You cannot call a card you already hold: Pagat counts a call for a card in your own hand as met by accident, and you carry on to the monte at chiamo’s price of 1, which would make chiamo a cheaper solo. Stramazzo counts card points in tricks and leaves the monte out, so one odd hand exists: take the last trick and a monte of four aces, hold two thirds in tricks, and you lose 17 to 18 and still pay triple. And everyone sees each side’s running card points, with the monte turned up at the count. Left out: the aggravated solissimo (dividete and scegliete), the four-person form and the simplified American Calabrasella. Pagat gives Terziglio no declarations and cavallore.it says it is played without them, so there are none.
Two computers or two friends, and what the table does
The two pages we lean on hardest, Wikipedia and Pagat, explain the game and stop there. This one deals you a hand of the Calabresella card game online, two ways. At the computer table you sit with two computers, one hand at a time, and press Next hand when a hand is counted. They answer after a beat. Or the host makes a table for three, picks how long, and sends a link to each of the other two seats, with voice if the host switches it on. A room is three people and no computer players.
The board says whose move it is, what just happened, each side’s card points, and why a card you cannot play is dimmed. Every suit is shown by symbol and named in words, so nothing rides on color alone, and the computer table has a high contrast switch too. The computers see only what their seat could see. Each scores its hand, three for a 3, two for a 2 or an ace, one for a king, plus a bonus for a long suit, and bids from that, with no dice in it. The computer table does not save your game. There is surely a Terziglio app somewhere. Here you open a page and drop two people a link, free, with the occasional discreet ad.
Questions people ask
What are the four suits in Italian cards?
Swords, batons, cups and coins. This table draws them as spades, clubs, hearts and diamonds, and the court cards, re, cavallo and fante, as the king, queen and jack. So you can build the forty-card Italian deck from a standard one: take out the 8s, 9s and 10s and nothing else.
What are some old card games for 3 players?
Calabresella, also called Terziglio, is one. Its earliest references go back to 1822, according to Wikipedia, which cites Dossena, and Pagat calls it a point-trick game with bidding that needs a fair amount of skill. It seats exactly three, so it suits a trio, and the bids decide who plays alone each hand.
What are fun card games for 3 players?
The ones where everybody starts level. The best card game to play with friends is the one you all know or none of you does, so nobody has to teach it. Terziglio fits when none of you has played: one soloist against two, decided by the bids each hand. Snip Snap Snorum also takes three.
How to play calabresella card game with 4 players
Pagat and Wikipedia say four can play if the dealer takes no cards for that hand and sits out. This table does not deal that way: it seats exactly three, and a room has three places, the host and two guests. With four of you, take turns sitting out, or open a Spades table, which is built for four.
Terziglio meaning
The name of a card game, also called Calabresella. Treccani, the Italian dictionary, traces it to the Spanish tresillo, a diminutive of tres, three, and describes it as Tressette played by three only, on a 40-card deck, twelve cards each and four left over as the monte.
How to play
Three people and forty cards: a standard deck without the 8s, 9s and 10s. Twelve cards each, and the last four go face down in the middle as the monte. In every suit the order is 3, 2, ace, king, queen, jack, 7, 6, 5, 4, and nothing is ever trump.
Everyone gets one chance to bid, the seat after the dealer first. Chiamo lets you name a card you lack and take the monte, solo takes the monte without a call, and solissimo plays the hand as dealt. The top bid plays alone against the other two. If all three pass, the cards are thrown in and the next seat deals.
Follow suit if you can. The highest card of the suit led wins the trick and leads the next, twelve tricks in all. An ace is a whole point, each 3, 2, king, queen and jack a third of one, and the last trick a whole point, with the monte going to whoever wins it. The soloist needs 6 of the 11 points, which the table counts as 18 thirds out of 35.
A won hand is paid the stake by each opponent: 1 for chiamo, 2 for solo, 4 for solissimo. A lost hand pays it to each of them. Taking all twelve tricks doubles the stake, and taking all the points without all the tricks triples it. Scores add up across hands. A match is first to 7 points unless the host picks 11 or 21.
Watch a hand played out, one move at a time, with the rules in full.