Escudo de Lascuarenta.es con los cuatro palos de la baraja españolaLascuarenta.es (The Forty)

Learn to play

Mentiroso tutorial: practise play by play

Mentiroso tutorial

Mentiroso isn't played in tricks or combinations: it's won with a poker face. Practise three table situations for playing, believing and catching a bluff, review the key points, and then play against the bot.

See Mentiroso tablesFull rules
Step 1 of 3

The numbers don't add up

Three Kings have already been declared on the table and the previous player says "one more". You hold two Kings in your hand.

Your hand

What do you do?

Correct: 0

Key points

The essentials del Mentiroso

The whole deck dealt out

The Spanish deck is dealt out one card at a time among 3 to 6 players. Each keeps their hand hidden and whoever gets rid of all their cards first wins.

Playing and declaring

Whoever opens drops one to three cards face down and declares the value: "two Knights". The next player, to their right, adds cards of the same value saying how many ("two more"), even without holding any — that's the bluff.

Calling liar

Instead of playing you can accuse the previous player. Only their cards are revealed: if they lied, they pick up the whole pile; if they told the truth, you pick it up instead. Whoever takes the cards restarts by declaring a new value.

Counting and sets of four

Keep count: there are only four cards of each value, so if three Kings have already been declared and you hold two, someone is lying. Gathering all four cards of a value lets you show them and remove them.

Winning and losing

The first player to run out of cards wins, and the last one holding cards loses. Nobody else scores anything.

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.

Sota de Oros de una baraja de Lascuarenta.esSota de Copas de una baraja de Lascuarenta.es
Sota de Espadas de una baraja de Lascuarenta.esSota de Bastos de una baraja de Lascuarenta.es
The sotas (jacks) of the four suits in the Baraja Antigua, in the style of early 20th-century decks.

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.

Rules of CuatrolaPartnerships, forcing suit and five tricks that countRules of TuteForty cards, calls made out loudRules of GuiñoteCalling the forty, swapping the seven, forced playRules of ChinchónSets, runs and the art of discardingRules of BriscaThree cards, the trump card and constant drawingRules of MentirosoBluffs, face-down cards and accusationsRules of MusPartnerships, signals and going all inRules of PumbaSnap twos, jacks as wildcards, fast discardingRules of La EscobaAdding up to fifteen and sweeping the tableRules of SolitarioYou against the deal: Klondike, Spider and Pyramid