Are there jokers in open buraco?

No. An open table uses two 52-card decks with the jokers left out, 104 cards in all, and the four 2s do the work of the wildcard. Jokers belong to the closed table, which comes to 108 cards.

Can I take the discard pile whenever I want?

Yes. At an open table there is no condition on the pickup. What arrives is the whole pile rather than the top card, so it is worth reading before you reach for it.

Do sets of three count in open buraco?

No. An open table melds sequences of the same suit and nothing else. Three cards of the same rank are three loose cards here, though they do count at a closed table.

Open buraco

The discard pile lies face up, all of it, and you may take the whole pile whenever you like. Two decks with the jokers left out, 104 cards, the 2s as wildcards, and sequences of the same suit. It is the table most people in Brazil learn on, and the easier of the two to start with.

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 pile is the whole point

Everything that has been discarded stays visible, in order, for the rest of the hand. Nobody has to remember what went past, because it is all still there to read.

Taking it costs nothing and needs no excuse. On your turn you either draw one card from the stock or you take the pile, and if you take it you take every card in it. That is the trade the whole table is built around: the pile is information while it sits there and it is weight the moment you pick it up. Eleven cards that fit nothing are eleven cards counting against you at the end of the hand.

The other consequence is quieter. Every card you throw away is public and permanent. Discarding a 7 of hearts to an opponent who is building hearts is a gift that cannot be taken back.

The deck: 104 cards

Two ordinary decks of French playing cards with the jokers left in the box. That is 104 cards, and there is no printed wildcard anywhere in them.

The wildcards are the 2s. A 2 is worth 10 points as a card and can stand in for a missing card in a meld, and no meld may hold more than one of them. Since they are the only wildcards in the deck, a 2 thrown away is a wildcard handed over.

Each player receives eleven cards. Two face-down hands of eleven, the mortos, are set aside, one for each side.

What counts as a meld

Only sequences: three or more cards of the same suit in order. The ace works at either end, below the 2 or above the king.

Three cards of the same rank are not a meld at an open table. If you learned the game somewhere that allows them, that is the closed table, and the rule is real there.

A meld of seven cards or more is a canastra. Clean when it holds no wildcard, dirty when it holds one. A dirty canastra can still be cleaned up later: when the natural card turns up, slide the 2 out to where it belongs and the meld is promoted.

Canastras and points

Dirty canastra: 100 points. Seven cards or more, with a 2 standing in somewhere.
Clean canastra: 200 points. No wildcard in it.
Sequence of thirteen: 500 points, and only with no wildcard in it. A thirteen-card run holding a 2 is a dirty canastra, worth 100.
Sequence of fourteen, the Royal: 1000 points. An ace at both ends of the run, and again no wildcard anywhere in it.

The cards themselves are worth 15 for an ace, 10 from king down to 8, 10 for a 2, and 5 from 7 down to 3. At the end of a hand your side adds what is on the table and subtracts what is still in hand.

Going out needs a clean canastra

An open table asks for the harder ending. To go out you need your morto taken, at least one clean canastra on the table, and nothing left in your hand. A dirty one will not do it here, which is the single rule newcomers from other tables trip over most.

Going out is worth 100 points. A side that finishes the hand without ever having taken its morto loses 100.

"Open" does not mean the same at every table

Worth saying plainly. Here, open and closed describe the discard pile, and the deck follows from that. Elsewhere, and particularly at Spanish-speaking tables, the same pair of words is used for the deck: open meaning a deck without jokers, closed meaning one with them.

The two usages agree on the deck by accident, since our open table is also the one without jokers. They do not agree on what the word is describing. We are not claiming ours is the only reading. We are saying which one you will find when you sit down, so that nobody arrives expecting a different game.

Frequently asked questions

Are there jokers in open buraco?: No. An open table uses two 52-card decks with the jokers left out, 104 cards in all, and the four 2s do the work of the wildcard. Jokers belong to the closed table, which comes to 108 cards.
Can I take the discard pile whenever I want?: Yes. At an open table there is no condition on the pickup. What arrives is the whole pile rather than the top card, so it is worth reading before you reach for it.
Do sets of three count in open buraco?: No. An open table melds sequences of the same suit and nothing else. Three cards of the same rank are three loose cards here, though they do count at a closed table.

The other table

The same game with the pile turned face down is closed buraco: 108 cards with the four jokers, a pickup you have to justify, sets allowed, and a dirty canastra enough to finish on. If you are starting from nothing, the full rules cover the deal, the morto and the scoring in one place.

Both are free in the browser, with nothing to install and no adverts during a hand. There is an offline mode against the computer, and private tables with an invite code when you want to play with people you know.