Catalonia · Card Game · 2 Players

How to Play Truc

Truc is the Mediterranean's great bluffing game — three cards, three tricks, and one shouted word that doubles the stakes. Played across Catalonia, Valencia, the Balearic Islands and into southern France, it is the ancestor of Truco, South America's most beloved card game. The cards matter less than the nerve of the player holding them. This guide teaches the Catalan heads-up form.

What You Need

A Spanish 40-card deck — no 8s or 9s. The suits are coins, cups, swords, and clubs (ors, copes, espases, bastos); the face cards are the sota (10), cavall (11), and rei (12).
2 players. The classic café game is played by 4 in partnerships, complete with secret signals across the table — this digital version is the heads-up duel.

The Card Ranking

The ranking is the heart of Truc, and it is not what you expect. From highest to lowest:

3 > 2 > 1 (as) > 12 (rei) > 11 (cavall) > 10 (sota) > 7 > 6 > 5 > 4

The humble 3 beats everything; kings rank below aces. Suits are completely irrelevant — all four 3s are equal, all four 7s are equal, and so on. That means tied tricks are common, and the tie rules below matter a great deal.

How to Play - The Rules

Three cards each, dealt one at a time. The deal alternates each hand, and the non-dealer is "mà" (the hand) — they lead to the first trick.
No trumps, never follow suit — play any card you like. The highest card wins the trick, and the trick's winner leads the next.
A tied trick ("empat") belongs to nobody — the same leader simply leads again.
Win two of three tricks to take the hand — BUT if any trick was tied, whoever won the first decided trick takes the whole hand. If all three tricks tie, mà wins.
The betting. A hand is worth 1 point. At your turn you may shout "Truc!", raising it to 2. Your opponent may accept ("vull"), counter-raise "Retruc!" to 3 — the cap; only the side that accepted a raise may make the next one — or fold. A fold gives the raiser the stake from before the raise: 1 point for a declined truc, 2 for a declined retruc.
You may also concede a bad hand at any time, giving your opponent the current stake.
The first player to reach 12 points wins the game.

Strategy Tips

The first trick is king. With any tie in the hand, the first decided trick wins everything — spend your strength early.
Being mà is a real edge. If everything ties, the hand is yours — so bluff a little more freely when you hold it.
Bet to the score. The player who is behind bets freely to catch up; the leader should fold marginal raises. A 1-point fold is cheap — a 3-point loss is not.
Keep the retruc weapon. Flat-calling a truc keeps the right to re-raise later, when your opponent has committed.
Bluff the snap-truc on trash occasionally. Winning 1 point uncontested adds up — and keeps your real trucs honest.

Cultural History

Truc and its French and Occitan sibling Trut belong to a family of bluffing games found on both sides of the Pyrenees, closely related to the English game Put described in Charles Cotton's The Compleat Gamester (1674). In the Catalan lands it has been the bar game for centuries — played loudly over coffee at marble café tables, where the drama of the shouted "TRUC!" is the whole point. In Valencia it is called the joc nacional, the national game, alongside pilota.

Spanish emigrants carried the game across the Atlantic, where it became Truco — the most beloved card game of Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil. Jorge Luis Borges devoted a 1923 poem ("El truco") and an essay to it, calling this family of games among the most ingenious ever devised.

Menorca is today's stronghold. The island's Open tournament drew a record 54 pairs in 2024; a bar club in Ferreries — "the sacred space of truc" — styles itself the game's World Championship; and youth programmes hand out free decks so the tradition doesn't fade.

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