How many cards does closed buraco use?

108. Two decks of French playing cards plus their four jokers. Each player is dealt eleven, and two face-down mortos of eleven are set aside, one for each side.

What does a justified pickup mean?

The top card of the discard pile has to go into a meld at the moment you take it, either extending one your side already has on the table or forming a new one. If it does, the whole pile comes to your hand, not just that card.

Does closed buraco mean a private table?

No. Closed describes the discard pile, which lies face down. Private tables do exist and are opened with an invite code, but that is a separate setting and any variant can be played at one.

Closed buraco

The discard pile lies face down and only its top card shows. To take it you have to use that card straight away, which is what "closed" means here. Two decks plus their four jokers, 108 cards, and sets of the same rank count as melds.

Before you sit down: the game still opens in Portuguese. The rules are the ones on this page and a table reads without much text, but we would rather say it now than after you arrive. English is written and waiting to be published.

Open the game

The 108 cards

A deck of French playing cards has 52, and buraco uses two, so the base is 104. Closed buraco puts the four jokers back in and the deck comes to 108.

That gives the table two kinds of wildcard. A joker is worth 50 points, more than any other card in the deck. A 2 is worth 10 and also stands in as a wildcard. Either can fill a gap in a meld, and no meld may hold more than one of them.

The deal is the same as at any other buraco table. Eleven cards to each player, and two face-down hands of eleven, the mortos, set aside one per side.

A pickup you have to justify

Only the top card of the discard pile is visible. Everything under it is face down and stays that way, so what you know about the pile is what you remember of it.

Taking it works differently from an open table. The top card must go into a meld at the moment you take it: extending a meld your side already has, or forming a new one there and then. Manage that and the whole pile comes to your hand, the same as anywhere else.

Which makes the decision a real one rather than a reflex. A justification you had to force usually ends with a large hand you cannot move, and the cards you could not use are points against you when the hand ends. Memory is the advantage here, in the way that reading is the advantage at an open table.

Sets count here

Sequences work as they do everywhere in buraco: three or more cards of the same suit in order, with the ace usable below the 2 or above the king.

Closed buraco adds the set, three or more cards of the same rank. That is the second thing that separates it from an open table, and it changes the opening of a hand more than the deck does. Three loose kings are a meld you can lay immediately, so melds appear on the table earlier, and having something on the table is also what lets you justify a pickup.

A meld of seven cards or more is a canastra. Clean if no wildcard sits in it, dirty if one does. A dirty one can be promoted later by sliding the wildcard out when the natural card arrives.

Finishing on a dirty canastra

To go out you still need all three: your morto taken, a canastra on the table, and an empty hand. What changes is the standard the canastra has to meet. A closed table accepts a dirty one, where an open table insists on a clean one.

That single rule is why closed hands run shorter. It rewards whoever finishes first rather than whoever finishes best, and the most common mistake at a closed table is holding on for a clean canastra you were never required to build. If your group prefers the stricter ending, a private table can be set to demand a clean one.

Points

Card values: Joker 50 · ace 15 · king down to 8, 10 each · 2, 10 and a wildcard · 7 down to 3, 5 each.
Canastras: Dirty 100 · clean 200 · a sequence of thirteen 500 · a sequence of fourteen, the Royal, 1000. The last two count only with no wildcard in them, which is why they are rare at a table carrying jokers.
Going out: 100 points. A side that never took its morto loses 100.

At the end of a hand each side adds what it has on the table and subtracts what is left in hand. A match runs to 1000, 1500, 2000 or 3000 points across several hands, and a first match is 1500.

Which one to start with

Closed buraco is the more forgiving of the two. Four extra wildcards make the first canastra easier to build, sets give you somewhere to start, and a dirty canastra is enough to finish, so a hand rarely stalls waiting for a card that never comes.

Open buraco is slower and stricter, and players who have been at it for years often prefer it for exactly that reason. Neither is the serious version. They are two shapes of the same game, and both are on the tables.

Frequently asked questions

How many cards does closed buraco use?: 108. Two decks of French playing cards plus their four jokers. Each player is dealt eleven, and two face-down mortos of eleven are set aside, one for each side.
What does a justified pickup mean?: The top card of the discard pile has to go into a meld at the moment you take it, either extending one your side already has on the table or forming a new one. If it does, the whole pile comes to your hand, not just that card.
Does closed buraco mean a private table?: No. Closed describes the discard pile, which lies face down. Private tables do exist and are opened with an invite code, but that is a separate setting and any variant can be played at one.

Keep reading

The table with the pile face up is open buraco: 104 cards, no jokers, sequences only and a clean canastra to finish on. If you are learning the game from scratch, start with the full rules, which cover the deal, the morto, the melds and the scoring in one place.

Both are free in the browser, with nothing to install, no card asked for and no adverts during a hand. There is an offline mode against the computer, and private tables with an invite code.