Playcard games

Escoba: questions and answers

Short answers to the questions people ask most about Escoba. Everything else is in the full rules.

What cards do you need for Escoba?
Forty: a Spanish pack, or a standard 52-card deck with the eights, nines and tens taken out. Cards count at face value from the ace (1) to the seven, then the jack (sota) is 8, the queen (caballo) 9 and the king 10. Coins are the suit that matters; with French cards, diamonds stand in for them.
How do you capture in Escoba?
Play a card, and take any cards on the table that add up to fifteen together with it. A seven takes an eight, or a five and a three; a king, worth ten, needs five more. You may take as many table cards as you like, as long as the total with your card is exactly fifteen.
Do you have to capture if you can?
You may play any card in your hand. Here, if the card you play can make fifteen, it has to take something, and when it can make fifteen in more than one way, you choose which. A card that makes fifteen with nothing is simply left on the table. Some home tables let you hold back a capture; this one does not.
What is an escoba?
Clearing every card off the table with one capture. It scores a point at once, and a deal can have several. If the four cards turned up at the start already make fifteen, the dealer takes them as an escoba before anybody plays. The last card of the deal never scores one.
Who gets the cards left on the table at the end?
Whoever made the last capture of the deal. They go into that player's pile and count for cards, coins and sevens, but taking them is never an escoba.
How is Escoba scored?
Four points a deal: most cards, most coins, the seven of coins (the velo) and most sevens, plus one for every escoba. A tied point goes to nobody. Many tables add bonuses — for all four sevens or all ten coins — but this table counts only the four points and the escobas.
How many points is a game of Escoba, and how many can play?
Twenty-one or thirty, agreed before you start, and if two sides finish level at the top, another deal is played. Two to four players: at two and three everyone plays alone, and at four you play in partnerships, partners opposite each other.
What is the difference between Escoba and Scopa?
The arithmetic. At scopa a card takes the card of the same value, or cards adding up to its value; at escoba the card you play counts towards the total, which must always be fifteen. Scopa's fourth point is the primiera, escoba's is simply most sevens — the seven makes fifteen with the sota, and there are four of each.