Sueca

Players and equipment

Four players split into two fixed partnerships, partners sitting across the table from each other, forty cards to a deck — strip out the 8s, 9s and 10s before you start. Two quirks to learn fast: the seven outranks everything below the ace (that's the manilha), and the jack beats the queen, probably a leftover from the old Portuguese decks this game comes from. Otherwise the ranking runs top to bottom as you'd expect: ace, seven, king, jack, queen, six, five, four, three, two.

Every card point in the deck comes from five ranks:

Ace

11

Seven

10

King

4

Jack

3

Queen

2

Six down to two

0

That is 120 points split across the deck, and the whole game is a fight over who ends up holding more than half of them.

The deal

The first dealer is picked at random. Ten cards each, dealt round by round until the dealer serves themselves last. Flip that last card face up — its suit is trumps for the hand. The player on the dealer's right shuffles, the one on the left cuts, and the deal itself moves one seat to the right after every hand.

Play

Trumps win a trick outright; without one in it, the highest card of the suit led wins. Whoever takes a trick leads the next.

The player to the dealer's right leads the first trick, and everyone after must follow suit when they can — short of it, any card will do. Partners play blind: no signals of any kind, spoken or otherwise, so reading each other's hands comes only from watching what gets played.

Scoring

A hand on the sheet is one deal, played right out to its last trick. At the end of it, add up how many of the deck's 120 card points your side's tricks hold, then enter that deal's result as a number of games in your own side's column — the host may enter or correct either side's: 1 game for more than 60 points, 2 for 91 or more, and 4 — which also ends the rubber on the spot — for sweeping every trick in the deal. A side that falls short of 61 enters 0. If both sides take exactly 60, nobody scores that deal and the next deal is worth one extra game to whoever wins it (two extra after two ties in a row) — the sheet does not add this for you, so enter the higher number yourself. The target line is 4: the first side to reach or pass it banks the match, and End match is any member's for a rubber that breaks up before that. SquareScores never deals a card or sees a trick — it only ever holds the running tally of games you tell it your side won.

Worked example

Say your side's tricks this deal hold three aces, two sevens, a king, two jacks and a queen:

3 aces

33

2 sevens

20

1 king

4

2 jacks

6

1 queen

2

Total

65

Sixty-five of the deck's 120 points clears the 60 needed and falls short of the 91 that would double it, so that deal is worth one game. Enter 1 in your side's column for the round and 0 in the other side's.

Ending

The match ends the moment a side's games total reaches 4, whichever deal that happens on — including in one stroke, if a side sweeps every trick in a single hand and jumps straight to 4. If your table's rubber breaks up before anyone gets there, End match is open to any player, not only the side in front.

Count the sevens early

There are only four manilhas in the deck and each is worth 10 points — almost as much as an ace. Keeping track of which suits' sevens are still out tells you a lot about whether a trick is safe to lead or better left alone.

Don't waste your aces on nothing

An ace is worth 11 points on its own, more than any other card, so losing one to a trick that carries nothing else is the costliest kind of mistake. Hold them for tricks that already have other counting cards in them, or for taking control of a suit at the right moment.

Watch the running total, not just the tricks

The number that decides a deal is the 120-point split, not who wins more tricks. A side can lose more tricks than it wins and still take the hand comfortably if the few tricks it does win are stuffed with aces and sevens, while the other side's many small tricks add up to nothing.

Read your partner's plays, because you can't ask

With no signals allowed, the only information you get from your partner is what they choose to play. A partner who ducks a trick they could have won is usually telling you they have nothing useful in that suit; a partner who throws away a high card early is often clearing it before it can be trumped later.

Decide early whether you're playing for the sweep

Once a side is clearly ahead in a deal, there's a choice between playing safe for the one or two games already secured and pushing to win every remaining trick and end the rubber outright. The second is worth far more, but a single slip can hand tricks — and the points in them — straight back to the other side.

Clockwise play in Brazil

Most tables play counter-clockwise, but in Brazil play runs clockwise instead. The deal itself is unchanged and the player to the dealer's left still cuts, but because that player is now next in turn, they also lead to the first trick.

Melar — throwing in a bad deal

Some Brazilian tables let the player who cut the deck throw the hand in before the first card is led, if their own hand holds fewer than 10 points. Nobody scores for that deal, and the same dealer reshuffles and deals again.

A harsher penalty for a revoke

A player who fails to follow suit when they could have is said to have revoked. Some tables punish a revoke by making the offending side lose two games. The score table only takes whole numbers upward, with no way to dock a side's running total, so a table that plays this way keeps the two-game deduction by hand, off the sheet.

The Azores' own manilha

In the Azores, the ten stands in for the seven as the manilha — the second-highest card in each suit — and the trump suit is found differently too: instead of turning up one of the dealer's own cards, the twelve cards left over from the deck (the rejected 7s, 8s and 9s) are cut to reveal it.

How many cards does Sueca use?

Forty. Take a standard 52-card deck and remove the 8s, 9s and 10s from every suit, leaving ace down to two plus the three face cards in each suit.

What is the manilha, and why does it matter?

The manilha is the second-highest card in each suit — the seven at most tables, the ten in the Azores — and at 10 points it's nearly as valuable as the ace. Tracking where the manilhas have gone matters almost as much as tracking the aces themselves.

How many games do you need to win Sueca?

Four. Each deal is worth 1, 2 or 4 games to whichever side takes more than half of the 120 card points on offer that hand, and the first side to reach four games wins the rubber outright.

What happens if a team wins every trick in a hand?

That side scores all four games at once and wins the rubber immediately, a feat called "dar uma bandeira" — literally, to give a flag. Taking all 120 points but still losing one trick along the way only counts as taking 91 or more, which is worth two games rather than four.

What if both sides end up with exactly 60 points?

That deal ties and nobody scores a game for it — enter 0 for both sides. By the rules the NEXT deal is then worth an extra game to whoever wins it (two extra if that one ties again too), but the sheet has no way to add that bonus on its own, so it is down to the table to remember and enter the higher number once the next deal is decided.

Can Sueca be played with three or five players?

Not the game on this page. Sueca is built around two fixed partnerships of two, always four players and never any other number. A bidding variant for 4, 5 or 6 players, Sueca Italiana, exists, but it scores differently enough to be a different game.