Truc

1. The deal: Truc is played with a 40-card Spanish deck — each player gets 3 cards. There are no trumps and you never have to follow suit. Card ranking, high to low: 3 > 2 > ace > rei (king) > cavall (knight) > sota (jack) > 7 > 6 > 5 > 4. Suits are irrelevant.
2. Tricks: the non-dealer leads. The highest card wins the trick, and the winner leads the next one. Equal cards tie the trick and the same leader leads again.
3. Winning the hand: win 2 of the 3 tricks. With ties in the mix, whoever wins the first decided trick wins the hand; if all three tricks tie, the non-dealer wins.
4. Truc! and Retruc!: the hand is worth 1 point — at your turn, call "Truc!" to raise it to 2. The accepter (and only the accepter) may later call "Retruc!" to raise it to 3. Decline a raise and your opponent scores the stake as it stood before the raise.
5. Folding: you may fold at any time, conceding the current stake to your opponent.
6. Winning the game: first player to 12 points wins.

Full rules guide & cultural history →

Truc is the great bluffing game of the Catalan lands — Catalonia, Valencia, and the Balearic Islands — and of Roussillon across the border in southern France, where it is a fixture of village cafés. A cousin of the 17th-century English game Put, it is famously a game to be played loudly: over coffee in a bar, with gestures, taunts, and table-slapping. The drama of the shouted "Truc!" — daring your opponent to pay double for a hand you may not even be able to win — is not a side effect of the game; it is the game.

Carried across the Atlantic by Catalan, Valencian, and Spanish emigrants, Truc took root in South America as Truco — today the most beloved card game of Argentina and Brazil, played everywhere from family kitchens to national championships. Jorge Luis Borges immortalized it in his 1923 poem "El truco," finding in the game's ritual bluffs a small theatre of fate and deception.

Nowhere does the original tradition burn brighter than on Menorca, where Truc remains a living part of island life. The island's annual Open drew a record 54 pairs in 2024, a bar club in Ferreries proudly styles its tournament the World Championship, and youth campaigns hand out free decks in schools to make sure the next generation learns to shout "Truc!" with conviction.