How to play Truco
2 or 4 players · 40 Spanish cards · first to 30
Truco is Argentina's national card game, and almost none of it is in the cards. Three cards each, three tricks, about forty seconds of play — and two entirely separate bets running over the top. You are not trying to win tricks. You are trying to get the other side to put points on the line and then lose them.
Objective
Reach 30 points first. A hand nobody bets on is worth a single point, so the points come from the betting: the envido, a bet about your cards before they are played, and the truco, which doubles, triples and quadruples what the hand itself is worth. At four players partners sit opposite and share a score.
Four cards outrank everything
The cartas bravas are promoted out of their ranks entirely. Best first:
- 1 of swords — the ancho de espadas
- 1 of batons — the ancho de bastos
- 7 of swords
- 7 of coins
Below those four, suit stops mattering completely:
So the sevens split, and so do the aces: two 7s are the third and fourth best cards in the pack and the other two rank below a Sota. Somebody who sees a 7 and thinks high is wrong half the time. Fourteen tiers in all, and learning which four cards were promoted is most of learning Truco.
The tricks
There is no trump and no suit to follow. Play whatever you like; the highest card takes the trick. Three cards each means three tricks, and two of them win the hand.
The tie nobody expects — a parda
If the two best cards in a trick are equal and came from opposite sides, the trick belongs to nobody. Ties are common, because there are four identical 3s and four identical 2s sitting in the middle of the ranking.
Who wins the hand
Two tricks out of three. If any trick was tied, the hand goes to whoever won the earliest trick that was not — which is why a Truco hand so often stops after two: tie the first, win the second, and the third cannot change anything. If all three tie, the hand goes to the mano, the player who led it.
The envido — a bet about your cards
Before the cards matter, you can bet on how good your best suit pair is. It has nothing at all to do with winning tricks, and it is settled and paid before play carries on.
Counting it
Pip cards count their own number. The three court cards — 10, 11 and 12 — count zero.
- • Two cards of one suit: add them together and add 20. The 7 and 6 of a suit is 33, the highest count there is.
- • No two of a suit: just your single highest card. Three court cards is a count of zero.
| Bid | If accepted | If refused |
|---|---|---|
| Envido | 2 | 1 |
| Envido again | 4 | 2 |
| Real envido | adds 3 | whatever stood |
| Falta envido | what the leader needs to reach 30 | whatever stood |
The higher count wins, and a tie goes to whichever seat speaks first going round from the mano — which is the reason leading the hand is worth having. A falta envido early in a match, when the leader is a long way from 30, can put the whole game on one count.
The truco — a bet on the hand
Where the envido bets on your cards, the truco bets on the hand itself, and it can be called during play while somebody else is still mid-turn.
| Bid | Hand is worth | Refusing pays |
|---|---|---|
| Nobody bets | 1 | — |
| Truco | 2 | 1 |
| Retruco | 3 | 2 |
| Vale cuatro | 4 | 3 |
Refusing always pays what was already agreed
Never the amount being asked for. That is the whole tension of the ladder: no is cheap the first time and expensive the third, so a bet you were always going to refuse is best refused straight away. Either opponent may answer a bet, whoever taps first, and they can answer by raising instead of accepting.
Señas — signalling your partner
At a real table, partners flash each other signs across the felt: a raised eyebrow for the ace of swords, a twist of the mouth for the ace of batons. This is not cheating. It is expected, and a Truco table where nobody signals is a Truco table playing a smaller game.
The act is public, the content is private
Everyone sees that you signalled; only your partner learns what it meant. At a table a good player's seña is invisible, and making the act visible is the honest digital trade — the opponents still know that something passed between you.
You can only signal what you actually hold
PlayTash offers the signals your hand supports and no others. A signal set you could lie with would stop being señas and start being chat, and it would mean nothing within a week.
Scoring, and how it is said out loud
The first 15 points of a match are the malas — the bad ones — and the second 15 are the buenas. A score is spoken in halves rather than as a total: 20 is not twenty, it is five buenas. It is display only, but it is how the game is read aloud and getting it wrong makes a Truco table sound like a translation.
Flor — off unless the host turns it on
Three cards of one suit is a flor, worth 3 points for every flor announced, and it cancels the envido for that hand. Buenos Aires mostly plays without it and the interior mostly plays with it, so PlayTash makes it a table setting, off by default. You never have to announce it: the server can see your cards, so it announces for you.
Strategy tips
- 💡Learn the four bravas before anything else. Every other decision in the game is downstream of knowing whether your 7 is the third best card in the pack or worse than a Sota.
- 💡Refuse early or commit. Refusing costs what was already agreed, so the cheapest no is the first one — and once you have said yes twice, folding is nearly as expensive as losing.
- 💡The envido and the truco compete for the same hand. Betting the truco shuts the envido window for everybody, so a truco called early can be a way of protecting a bad envido rather than a claim about your cards.
- 💡A tied first trick is worth more than it looks. Tie the first and win the second and the hand is over — the third trick cannot take it back.
- 💡Leading the hand is worth real points. The mano takes an envido tie and takes a hand where all three tricks tied.
- 💡Watch what your partner signals, and remember the opponents saw you signal too. They do not know what you said, but they know you had something worth saying.
About Truco
Truco is played across the southern half of South America — Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, southern Brazil, Chile and Bolivia — and each country has its own version. PlayTash builds the Argentine game, Truco Argentino, which is the form with the envido as a separate bet alongside the truco itself.
It belongs to the family of games that pagat groups as Put games, after a 17th-century English game of the same shape: a very short hand, a bet over the top of it, and the real contest in whether the other side believes you. Truco is by far the most widely played survivor of that family.
The bluffing is not incidental. A hand takes about forty seconds to play and is worth one point if nobody bets, so a table that never bets is a table playing a game with almost nothing in it. Everything interesting in Truco happens in the decision to raise, to accept, or to fold a hand you could have won.
The 40-card Spanish pack is the same deck as Tute, Ronda and Escoba, with suits of cups, coins, swords and batons. The rules on this page follow pagat.com, which is the reference used when Truco was built here. The contraflor ladder is deliberately not implemented, because the published description of its refusal values admits two readings and inventing one would be worse than leaving it out.
Play Truco online for free, with two players or four, against friends or against bots.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is the 7 of swords so much better than the other 7s?
Four cards are promoted out of their ranks entirely — the cartas bravas. Best first, they are the 1 of swords, the 1 of batons, the 7 of swords and the 7 of coins. Below those four, suit stops mattering completely. So the sevens split: two of them are the third and fourth best cards in the pack and the other two rank below a 10. The aces split the same way. A player who sees a 7 and thinks “high” is wrong half the time, and learning which four cards are promoted is most of learning Truco.
What is the envido, exactly?
A bet about the cards you were dealt, settled before they are played, and it has nothing to do with winning tricks. Count it like this: two cards of the same suit are worth their numbers added together plus 20, where 10, 11 and 12 count as zero. The best possible count is 33, from the 7 and 6 of one suit. If you have no two cards of a suit, your envido is simply your highest single card. The higher count wins the bet, and a tie goes to whoever speaks first going round from the mano.
Why does refusing a bet cost a different amount each time?
Because refusing always pays the amount that was already agreed, never the amount being asked for. Refuse a plain truco and you hand over 1 — what the hand was already worth. Accept the truco and then refuse the retruco and you hand over 2. That is the whole tension of the ladder: saying no is cheap the first time and expensive the third, so a bet you were always going to refuse is best refused early.
What is falta envido?
The envido bet that ends the match. Instead of a fixed number, it is worth exactly what the side currently in the lead still needs to reach 30 — so accepting it and losing can hand the game over in one hand. Early in a match, when the leader is a long way from 30, that makes it enormous, which is the correct amount of frightening.
What happens when two cards tie a trick?
Nobody wins it. If the two highest cards in a trick are equal and came from opposite sides, the trick is a parda and belongs to neither side — and ties are common, because there are four identical 3s and four identical 2s. The hand then goes to whoever won the earliest trick that was not tied. That is why so many hands stop after two tricks: tie the first and win the second and there is nothing left to play for. If all three tie, the hand goes to the mano's side.
Can I call truco when it is not my turn?
You can answer one at any time — that is the point of the mechanism, and either opponent may answer, whichever taps first. Making a new bet is narrowed to the player on turn, plus the common case of raising as your answer (“quiero, retruco”). A raise arriving from a seat nobody was watching, at a moment nobody expected, reads as a bug on a phone rather than as a bold move.
Are the señas cheating?
No — they are part of the game, and at a real table they are expected rather than tolerated. Partners flash each other signs for the best cards: a raised eyebrow for the ace of swords, a twist of the mouth for the ace of batons. PlayTash makes the act public and the content private: everyone can see that you signalled, but only your partner learns what it meant. It also only lets you signal what you actually hold, so the information your partner gets is always true.
What is the flor, and why have I not seen one?
Three cards of the same suit. It is a real part of the game in much of the Argentine interior and is mostly not played in Buenos Aires, so on PlayTash it is a switch the host turns on before the match and it is off by default. With it on, a flor scores 3 points for every flor announced and cancels the envido for that hand. You do not have to announce it — the server can see your cards, so it is announced for you.