Learn to play
La Escoba tutorial: practise play by play
Escoba tutorial
Escoba (15-point escoba) is pure mental arithmetic: adding to fifteen with your card and those on the table. Practise three real plays, review the key points, and then play against the bot.
Adding up to fifteen
On the table there's a three, a five and a seven. Which card do you play?
Table
Your hand
What do you do?
Key points
The essentials de La Escoba
Deal and goal
2 to 4 players with the Spanish deck: three cards to each, and four face up on the table. The goal is to pick up cards by adding up to exactly fifteen.
Card values
Ace through seven are worth their number; Jack eight, Knight nine and King ten. With that count you look for fifteen between your card and one or more on the table.
The escoba
If your pickup clears the whole table you call escoba and score a point straight away. Careful about leaving the table close to fifteen: you'll be handing it to the next player.
Forced pickup
A variant chosen before sitting down. When active, if your card adds to fifteen you must pick it up; when off, you can leave it on the table and save the play for later.
Scoring the hand
One point for most cards, one for most coins, one for most sevens and one for the seven of coins (the velo), plus one point per escoba. First to 21 points wins.
Questions
Questions about this tutorial
Origins
History of the deck
Origin of the deck
The 40-card Spanish deck arrived on the peninsula in the 14th century and established its four suits —coins, cups, swords, and clubs— as symbols of medieval social classes.
The Tute
Heir to the Central European Marriage, Tute popularized the 20 and 40 declarations and became the quintessential table and tavern game.
La Cuatrola
A pairs variant from the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula. It is played only with the 20 scoring cards (aces, 3s, kings, knights, and jacks): all are dealt, 5 per player, and the trump card is one of the dealer's cards, which they show to the table. Whoever dares to 'sing Cuatrola' commits to winning all five tricks alone.
Full rules
Rules of every game, in writing
Check the deck and its values, the deal, how a round unfolds, scoring, strategy, common mistakes, regional variants and table vocabulary.