Sueca rules: how to play the Portuguese card game

In Portugal, sueca is the card game of cafés, neighbourhood clubs and village festival tournaments. Anyone who knows the Spanish games brisca or tute will find the mechanics familiar: the same card values of 11, 10, 4, 3 and 2, a trump suit and 120 points at stake. But sueca has three features of its own that change everything: it is played with a French-suited deck, the seven is the second-highest card, and partners may not talk or signal to each other. This guide explains the sueca rules and how to play sueca as it is played in Portugal, with the Portuguese terms you will hear at the table, the differences from one region to another and what tournament regulations say.

What sueca is and where it comes from

Sueca (in Portuguese, sueca) is a trick-taking game with trumps from the ace-ten family, the same family as brisca, tute and guiñote in Spain: games where the winner is not whoever takes the most tricks, but whoever collects the cards worth the most points. It is considered the most widely played card game in Portugal, and it is also played in the Azores and Madeira, in Brazil and in Angola, as well as in Portuguese communities around the world.

Its origin is poorly documented. There is no reliable date of birth and no early text describing it, and the rules have mostly been passed on by word of mouth, which explains why they change from one village to the next. What is clear is its family connection:

• With Portuguese bisca. Sueca can be seen as a version of bisca with ten cards per player. Bisca, in turn, is the Portuguese version of the Italian briscola and a close cousin of the Spanish brisca.
• With an old German game. The games historian David Parlett notes that sueca closely resembles Einwerfen, a German game that is among the earliest of the ace-ten family.

The name literally means "Swedish woman", but no source gives a convincing explanation of why the game is called that. It is best to be wary of any story that claims to know for sure.

The deck: 40 French-suited cards

Sueca is played with a standard 52-card French-suited deck with the eights, nines and tens removed, and the jokers too. That leaves 40 cards: ten per suit. Any standard poker deck will do; if you want to know how other decks are made up, see how many cards are in a deck.

40 cards: ace, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, jack, queen and king of each suit

A point of vocabulary that confuses English speakers: in Portuguese, the French suits keep names inherited from the old Latin deck. Spades are called espadas, hearts are copas, diamonds are ouros and clubs are paus. If a Portuguese player tells you trumps are "espadas", they mean the spades of a poker deck. The court cards are the rei (king), the valete (jack) and the dama (queen).

You can also play with a Latin-suited deck, such as the Spanish one, by removing the eights and nines. In that case the ranking is ace, seven, king, knight, jack (sota in Spanish) and six down to two, with the same points.

Sueca card values and ranking

Each suit has ten cards and they all follow the same ranking. The highest is the ace and the second is the seven, which in Portuguese is called the sete, manilha or bisca. Then come the three court cards and, at the bottom, the cards with no points, from six down to two.

Two things are worth learning from the start. First, among the cards with no points, the higher number wins, so a six beats a five and a three beats a two. Second, cards with no points add nothing even if they win the trick. A trick made up of a six, a five, a four and a two is worth zero, which is why the number of tricks each partnership takes does not matter for the result; only what is inside them counts.

Players, partnerships and seating

Sueca is always played by four, in two fixed partnerships. Partners sit opposite each other, so the players of each side alternate around the table. Traditional score sheets call the two sides nós (us) and eles (them).

Play goes anticlockwise: the deal, the turn to play and the passing of the deal all move to the right. This is one of the differences from Brazil, where sueca is played clockwise.

Shuffling, cutting and dealing

The first dealer (in Portuguese, dador) is chosen at random, and after each hand the deal passes to the player on the right. The usual routine is this:

1. Shuffle: the player sitting to the right of the dealer shuffles.
2. Cut: the player to the dealer's left cuts; they belong to the opposing partnership from the shuffler.
3. Deal: the dealer deals all 40 cards, ten to each player. There is no stock to draw from: every card is in play from the start.

The most distinctive part of sueca is how trumps (in Portuguese, trunfo) are decided. There is no choosing or bidding: trumps are set by a card the dealer shows to everyone. There are two traditional ways of doing it, and both appear in Portuguese regulations:

• Turning the bottom card. The dealer turns up the bottom card of the deck, leaves it face up and deals the cards in packets of ten starting from one side, so that this card ends up in the dealer's own hand.
• Turning the top card. The dealer turns up the top card, keeps it together with the next nine and deals the rest in packets of ten in the other direction.

Either way the result is the same: the suit of the turned card is trumps for the whole hand, and that card belongs to the dealer, who must play it like any other. The card is left face up in full view so that nobody forgets which suit is trumps. In traditional sueca, asking which suit is trumps is the only thing you may say during play.

In the example, the dealer has turned up the seven of spades: spades (espadas) are trumps, and the dealer keeps a 10-point card that is also the second-highest trump.

How a trick is played

The player sitting to the dealer's right leads, playing any card they like. The others each play one card in turn, moving to the right. The four cards form a trick (in Portuguese, vaza), which is won by:

• the highest trump, if anyone has played a trump;
• if nobody has played a trump, the highest card of the suit led. Cards of other suits never win, even if they are an ace.

The winner of the trick takes it, places it face down on their partnership's pile and leads to the next one. This continues until all ten tricks of the hand have been played.

You must follow suit

The central rule of sueca is following suit (in Portuguese, assistir): if you have cards of the suit led (the puxada), you must play one of them. Only when you have no cards of that suit left can you play whatever you like: a trump, to trump the trick (in Portuguese, cortar), or a card of another suit to discard.

What sueca does not require, and this is an important difference from tute, is winning the trick:

• If you follow suit, you may play a low card even if you hold one that would win.
• If you cannot follow suit, you do not have to trump: you may discard from another suit even if you hold trumps.
• If someone has already trumped, you may overtrump with a higher trump, but you do not have to. And if you have cards of the suit led, you must keep following suit even after the trick has been trumped.

With spades as trumps, the ace of hearts is led. The second player follows with the five; the third, who has no hearts, trumps with the two of spades; the fourth follows with the queen. The two of spades wins, the lowest trump in the deck, and that partnership collects 13 points: 11 for the ace and 2 for the queen.

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The renúncia: failing to follow suit

Playing a card of another suit when you hold a card of the suit led is the most serious offence in sueca. In Portuguese it is called a renúncia (a revoke), and it makes no difference whether it is deliberate or a slip.

It works by accusation: the opposing partnership has to notice it and call it. When they do, the tricks already played are examined to prove it. What is not standardised is the penalty, which varies by area and by set of rules:

When to make the claim also varies. Some regulations require the hand to stop as soon as the renúncia is spotted; others ask players to wait until the end of the hand and report it to the referee. In some, once the next hand has started, no claims about the previous one are accepted. If you are going to play seriously, agree on the penalty before the first hand.

Sueca scoring: how points are counted

Once all ten tricks have been played, each partnership counts the points in the cards it has won. Between them they always add up to 120, so it is enough to count one pile and subtract. That figure decides how many games (or scoring points) the winning partnership records:

Portuguese players often read the 91 rule the other way round: the losing partnership must reach at least 30 points to get "free" and lose only one game. If it stays on 29 or fewer, it loses two.

The bandeira

What not everyone agrees on is exactly what a bandeira is:

• In most regulations and descriptions, it means winning all ten tricks. If a partnership takes all 120 points but loses a worthless trick (for example, a six, a five, a four and a two), there is no bandeira: it counts as a hand of 91 or more, that is, two games.
• In other areas it is enough to take all 120 points, even if a pointless trick was lost.

The 60-60 tie

When each partnership has 60 points nobody wins the hand, but here too there is no single rule. In some places the hand is simply cancelled and redealt. In others, the next hand is worth one extra game to whoever wins it: two games for 61 to 90 points and three for 91 or more. Many tables ignore this rule and carry on as normal.

How long a match lasts

In social play, the most common format is a match to four games: the first partnership to reach four wins the match (in Portuguese, partida). That is why a bandeira, worth four, wins it in one go. Tournaments tend to play longer matches to reduce the role of luck: we have seen municipal regulations with matches to 8 points, to 15 points or best of three matches.

Each game won is marked with a line or a dot on a sheet of paper. The traditional system in northern Portugal draws a cross for each partnership and adds dots at the ends of its arms; other areas draw a kind of comb. The name of the mark also changes from village to village: risco, moca, bola or carola. Even the words get swapped: in some regulations a jogo is each hand and a partida is the whole match, and in others it is exactly the other way round.

Can you signal in sueca? No

This is where sueca parts ways with brisca and mus. In traditional sueca partners may not signal to each other or have any kind of conversation about the game. It is a calado (silent) game. Tournament regulations put it in writing: talking to your partner, the opponents or the audience during a hand is forbidden, and repeat offenders can lose scoring points.

Nor may you show your cards to your partner or put a card on the table before it is your turn. In friendly games some groups agree on signals before they start, but these are not part of the rules and in a tournament they would cost you the match. The only legitimate way to inform your partner is the card you play, and that is exactly what makes sueca interesting. If you are curious about signalling in card games, it is explained in our rules of mus, a Spanish card game.

Documented regional variants

Sueca has been passed on by word of mouth for generations, so every area has its own customs. These are the variants described in more than one source:

Sueca vs bisca, brisca and tute: similarities and differences

Sueca and the Spanish games brisca and tute belong to the same family and share the same card values, but they play very differently. If you know one, this table will save you a lot of mistakes when you switch to another:

The difference you notice most at the table is information. In sueca every card is dealt and you must follow suit, so an attentive player can gradually work out what each person has left. In brisca, with only three cards in hand and a stock to draw from, that is impossible. In addition, Spanish brisca allows signals between partners; sueca does not, and everything rests on memory and deduction. You can find the other games in this family in our guide to Spanish deck games.

Basic strategy

Sueca has a reputation as a simple game, but matches between experienced players are decided by a few points. These ideas follow directly from the rules and help from the very first game:

Count the trumps

Each suit has ten cards, so there are ten trumps in play. Keeping track of the ones that have fallen tells you when your high cards in other suits are no longer at risk of being trumped. A study by Leiden University (2016), which simulated millions of sueca hands by computer, calculated that each trump in your hand is worth about seven points on average to your partnership. The figure confirms what players sense: the number of trumps matters more than almost anything else.

Be careful with the seven

The seven is worth 10 points and only one card in its suit beats it: the ace. If the ace of that suit has not appeared yet, playing the seven means risking 10 points. The sensible move is to wait until the ace falls or until it turns out your partner holds it. The same goes, even more so, for the seven of trumps: if you play it too early and the ace of trumps is in an opponent's hand, they take it.

Load points when the trick is your partner's

If your partner is already winning the trick with a card nobody can beat, that is the moment to play your point cards in that suit or, if you have none, to discard a king or a jack. Conversely, when the trick is going to the opponents, give them the cards that are worth nothing.

Do not waste trumps

Leading a trump forces the others to play trumps, but it also leaves you with fewer. In the same study's simulations, always leading trumps did slightly worse than leading another card. Drawing trumps makes sense when your partnership holds most of them and you want to clear the opponents' trumps before playing your aces; otherwise, keep them for trumping.

Play for your partner without speaking

Since there are no signals, information travels in the cards. Leading a suit in which you hold the ace says a lot; discarding a suit says you are not interested in it. A good sueca partner watches what you discard and which suit you lead.

How much does a deck of cards cost?

From €5 to over €100. The 52 cards and the rules stay the same; this is what changes.

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Frequently asked questions

How many points do you need to win at sueca?

More than 60 of the 120 points in the deck, that is, 61 or more. With 91 or more you win two games, and with every trick, four.

What is the highest card in sueca?

The ace. Next comes the seven, called the manilha or bisca in Portuguese, and then the king, the jack and the queen. Below them are the six, five, four, three and two.

How much is each card worth in sueca?

The ace is worth 11 points, the seven 10, the king 4, the jack 3 and the queen 2. The cards from six down to two are worth nothing. There are 120 points in total.

What is a bandeira in sueca?

It means winning every trick in a hand. It is worth four games, so in the usual match to four games it wins outright. In some areas taking all 120 points is enough.

What happens if someone commits a renúncia?

If a player fails to follow suit while holding cards of the suit led and the opponents prove it, the offender's partnership is penalised. The most common penalty in tournaments is losing four scoring points, although depending on the area the hand or two games are lost instead.

Can you signal in sueca?

No. Traditional sueca is played in silence and tournaments forbid any communication between partners. The only thing you may ask is which suit is trumps.

Can sueca be played with two or three people?

Sueca is a game for four in partnerships. For two players, the Portuguese play bisca, which uses the same cards and points with three or nine cards per player.

What deck is used for sueca?

A 52-card French-suited deck without the eights, nines, tens or jokers. Any standard poker deck will do.

You do not need anything special to play sueca: an ordinary poker deck, four people and a sheet of paper to keep score. If you are looking for a deck that will last through many games, take a look at our selection of playing cards.

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Keep exploring

• Brisca rules, the Spanish cousin of sueca
• Tute rules: declarations, the obligation to win the trick and variants
• Guiñote rules, another ace-and-three game
• Card games with a poker deck
• Card games: the full list by type
• Scopa rules

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