It is an Italian card game and one of the most famous national card games in Italy. It is played with a standard Italian 40-card deck usually by two or four players in pairs of two. Three, five or six players can also play this game.
Scopa is a bright and unusual Italian solitaire game. The goal of the game is to remove all the cards from the game table. This is evidenced even by the name of the game.
How to play
The game is played with a 40-card deck of Italian cards. Just like traditional cards, they have four suits, namely swords, sticks, cups, and coins. Each category, in turn, has 10 cards, including the ace, king, knight, and jack, as well as all cards from two to seven.
Each player receives three cards, and four more are placed in the centre of the table. Each player makes one move. Then they receive three more cards until there are no cards left in the deck.
If the card placed by a player is equal in value to one of the cards on the table, he takes both his card and the card from the table. If it is equal to the sum of the cards on the table, the participant takes all the elements. If there are no matching cards on the table, the player simply discards one card and places it on the table.
If a card matches all the cards on the table, the player receives a winning hand, which is known as an osprey. Such combinations are worth 1 point. Getting more cards than others, collecting cards of the same suit also adds 1 point. The best player will receive the same reward.
The cards are dealt randomly, so you just have to hope for luck and choose a successful strategy.