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Burraco Rummy

January 24, 2010

Burraco- Another Rummy Variation

Mr. Wayne Dyer, who lives opposite my house, had purchased this card game called “Burraco” from Amazon.com for $19.00.
Knowing that I love card games, he brought the box over and showed it to me wanting to know if I’d be willing to give it a try. “Sure,” I said – always been a sucker for new card games.
Simultaneously, I reminded myself to ask Mr. Dyer why he felt the need to buy the box rather than play online rummy.
Whenever I play any card game (play rummy most of the time), I always play online rummy – it’s so much more convenient to play online rummy games don’t you think?

If you havent started playing online rummy yet, then you should try it at Rummyroyal.com
You can play against others for fun, or for real money.
As a new player there, they give you $5 just for registering an account, and then you can try and play online rummy for real money without spending a dime.
For those who can affort it, they also offers a deposit bonus, where they match what you deposit up to $200.
That means that if you deposit $50, you will also get $50 in bonus for free.
View an instruction video on online rummy.

Click Here to get the free bonus

 Now lets get back to Burraco.

It is said that the game of Burraco originated in Uruguay in the 1940s and its name was derived from the Portuguese word ‘Burraco’ which means sieve. 
Burraco is quite popular in Italy as well.
In Italy, there are organizations, clubs and tournaments exclusively for Burraco fans. 
In fact, most online rummy sites will offer you the Italian version of the game.
You might want to check the site where you play online rummy to know which version is offered.
A book authored by Giorgio Vitale gives all the details about this game and is available in French, Italian and English.

Briefly, “Burraco”, is a card game played by four people in fixed partnerships.
Each member will attempt to make card combinations i.e., cards of equal rank and sequences are grouped together to form a “suit”.
An Ace is the highest ranking card and there is a bonus if you succeed in grouping seven or more cards.
Burraco is played with two packs of French playing cards and they include four jokers.
Jokers and 2’s are the wild cards in this game.

Each player is dealt eleven cards one by one.
Two piles of eleven cards each are placed at the corner of the table.
These are known as ‘Pots’.
The remaining cards are placed face down on the table to from the Stock Pile.
The top card of the Stock Pile is turned up and placed by the side to start the Discard Pile.
The main aim of this rummy variation is to be the first to accumulate 2005 points to win the game. This is done by continuing the combinations that you and your partner have already started.

Since Jokers and Deuces are designated as ‘Wild Cards’ in Burraco, they can be substituted with the card they represent in the combination.
A ‘Burraco’ is made up of a minimum of seven cards of a kind or a run of seven cards of the same suit. So you can have 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and a 10 of hearts forming a Burraco.
This would be deemed a ‘pure’ Burraco since there is no wildcard substituting another card in the combination.  
However, if there is a 2 of hearts in place of the 8 of hearts in the group, you would have a ‘dirty Burraco’.
The 2 of hearts can only be replaced by an 8 of hearts to make the Burraco pure.

The game progresses with a player drawing a card from the Stock pile.
If he is interested in a card from the discard pile, he has to pick up the whole pile.
The player can form his melds and lay them on the table.
He can also add more cards to an existing meld.
The final stage of play in his turn is to discard a single card.
The player who has put down all the eleven cards as well as those taken from the Discard Pile is allowed to take the Pot of eleven cards located at the side of the table.
These new cards can only be played during the next turn.
Another occasion where the player takes the Pot is when he has no single card left over to discard.
He takes the Pot and uses the cards during his turn of play.
The round of play ends when a player has taken a Pot, has melded all the cards he held and has at least one Burraco, either pure or dirty, and discarded his last card.

Let us now take a look at the card values in the game of Burraco.
Jokers equal 30 points while Aces equal 15 points and Wild Deuces equal 20 points. 
Card values 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 are valued at 5 points. Cards 8, 9, 10, Jack, Queen and King each equal 10 points.
A Dirty Burraco gets 100 points.
A pure Burraco will get 200 points.
The closing of the game gets 100 points to the player.
There is a penalty of a hundred points if you fail to take the Pot. After each closure of the play, the scores are added and the penalties (negative points) deducted to arrive at the final score for the game.

You can play online rummy at sites like Rummyroyal.com which offer a number of rummy variations that will ensure you have a good time.
The Burraco variation can be played online on a number of other Italian and Brazilian sites.
You could also play Burraco against the computer by downloading the game software.
This way, you can learn to play the game at your own pace.
You can adjust the skill setting to suit your level of play – either Medium or Expert.
The computer version allows you to control the speed of play, decide on the maximum score level to achieve, the playing table background, the style of cards, etc. but do check which version of Burraco is available.

The advantage of playing rummy online is that the computer saves interrupted games to be resumed later.
The computer also records the players’ scores and classifications if the play was interrupted, so that you can easily start to play rummy where you left off the previous time.
In other words, the computer manages all the nitty-gritty of the game while you can concentrate and play online rummy and simply enjoy yourself.

Get started with Online Rummy today – Click Here