Truco Signals: Argentine and Uruguayan Partner Signs

In truco you can lie with your voice, with your cards and with your face. The signals are the face part: a silent language that lets two partners, sitting opposite each other, reach an understanding without saying a word. This article sets out the most widespread set of truco signals in the River Plate region, explains how each gesture is made, how the signals change in Uruguay and in the variants still played in Spain, and which table rules you need to be clear about. If you do not know the game yet, start with our truco rules: here we assume you already know what envido, flor and the calls are.

What truco signals are for

In truco each player receives only three cards and the hand is decided over three tricks. With so little information, knowing what your partner holds changes every decision: whether to call truco, whether to accept an envido or whether to save your strongest card for the last trick. Signals solve that problem. With a brief gesture, your partner knows whether you have the ace of swords, a couple of threes or nothing.

They serve three purposes:

• Sharing out the work of the tricks. If your partner knows you hold a top card, they can play a low card on the first trick and save their strength.
• Deciding the bets. In team truco, the player who usually decides whether to call, accept or fold is the pie, the last player on each side to play a card, who acts as captain. The signals are aimed mainly at them.
• Deceiving. A false signal, made for the opponent to see, is one more bluff. It is legal and part of the game, though it has a cost: it can also confuse your own partner.

Are signals allowed in truco?

Signals only make sense when there are partners: in four-player truco (two against two) and six-player truco (three against three). Head to head there is nobody to signal to. The six-player game has a special case, pica-pica: hands in which each player faces only the opponent opposite. During those hands the other players may not intervene or comment, and the side that does loses and must give back any points it has won.

What is never allowed is showing each other your cards. The idea is precisely the opposite: that is what the signals are for.

Truco cheat sheet: signals for the top cards

Before the table, two terms you will hear constantly in Argentina and Uruguay. The cartas bravas («fierce cards») are the four that beat all others: ace of swords, ace of clubs, seven of swords and seven of coins. The ace is called the ancho; the aces of cups and coins, which are not top cards, are the anchos falsos («false aces»), and the sevens of cups and clubs, the sietes falsos. The court cards (jack, knight and king) are called negras and count for nothing in the envido.

This is the ranking of the cards for the tricks, from highest to lowest, with the signal for each one in the most common River Plate code:

Below the false aces come the kings, knights, jacks, false sevens, sixes, fives and fours, which have no signal of their own in the usual code. So if your partner signals only one card, it is reasonable to assume the other two are worth little.

How to read several signals at once

With three cards in hand it is normal to have more than one card to communicate. A tidy way to do it is to signal the important cards one after another, starting with the highest, and to make no signal for court cards or low cards. If you have the seven of coins and a three, for example, the sequence would be mouth to the left, then the lip bite. The longer the sequence, the easier it is for an opponent to see it, so many players signal only the card that really matters for the play.

Truco envido signal and flor signals

The envido is played on the points in your hand: two cards of the same suit score their value plus 20 (court cards count 0), and if you do not have two of the same suit only your highest card counts. The maximum is 33, with the seven and six of the same suit. What your partner needs to know is not your exact points but whether you have enough to fight the envido.

Where the flor does have a signal is in some local variants. In the truque of Villar de Cañas (Cuenca, Spain), which is played with a muestra, village tradition signals the flor by moving the lips and the reserved flor (one with two or three muestra cards) by raising both shoulders, while tilting the head means «raise the envido» or «leave it to me».

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Uruguayan truco signals

Uruguayan truco adds an element that changes the whole code: the muestra. After the deal, the next card from the deck is turned face up, and its suit makes five cards of that suit the strongest in the game, the piezas: the two, four, five, knight and jack of the muestra suit, in that order. Below the piezas come the top cards, which in Uruguay are called matas.

Since there are new cards to communicate, the signals are reorganised:

Regional variants

No rulebook sets the signals for everyone. Game guides and rulebooks stress that they change from place to place and that each partnership can create its own code. These are the best documented variants:

The Spanish variety has a historical explanation. River Plate truco descends from the truc that settlers took from eastern Spain, and each region settled on its own strong cards. Our guides to the history of the Spanish deck and Spanish deck games tell the story in more detail.

Signals and talking: what you can say out loud

Signals are silent. What is said out loud works under different rules, and this is where most points are lost through carelessness. In truco you can talk freely, joke and lie in words, but game words are binding: truco, retruco, vale cuatro, envido, real envido, falta envido, flor, quiero and no quiero count as a call as soon as they are spoken, even in jest or in the middle of a sentence.

• Asking your partner is calling. Saying «have you got envido?» («¿tenés envido?») in the first hand counts as a call, not a question. The same goes for any sentence containing a reserved word.
• Saying «flor» means you must have it. When playing with flor, anyone who names it without holding it loses the points for the hand.
• Numbers are binding too. Once the envido has been accepted, the number of points you state is the one that counts, even if you got it wrong.

The practical difference is this: a signal gives information only to whoever sees it, and an opponent can steal it; a sentence is heard by all four players and, if it contains a game word, there is no going back. That is why experienced players talk a lot about things other than the game and make their signals in silence.

How to signal in truco without your opponents seeing

Since signals are public, technique matters as much as the code. These are the habits most often repeated among seasoned players:

• Pick the moment when your opponents are looking at something else. A good moment is when they are sorting their own cards after the deal, or when one of them is thinking about what to play.
• Make sure your partner is looking at you. A signal your partner does not see can only be seen by the opponents.
• Small, short gestures. Eyebrows that rise for half a second get caught less often than eyebrows that stay up.
• Keep a constant baseline expression. If you always make small faces when you look at your cards, the real signal gets lost among the other gestures.
• Use false signals sparingly. A well-placed false signal makes your opponent doubt all the others, but if you use them often your partner will stop trusting you.
• Watch both opponents, not just the one opposite you. In four-player truco, the opponent beside you can also see your partner's face.

Signals best avoided

The basic River Plate code is known by practically anyone who has played a few games. That has a direct consequence: if an opponent sees you raise your eyebrows, they know straight away that you have the ace of swords. The most famous signals are the easiest to read, which is why many regular partnerships prefer to steer clear of them.

• Eyebrows, wink and kiss. These are the three best-known truco signals and the first an attentive opponent looks for.
• Closing your eyes. Warning that you have nothing is useful for your partner, but it also tells the opponents they can push with truco without fear.
• Signals that mean something else in your opponents' code. If there are players from different countries at the table, the kiss or the open mouth can be read two ways.

The alternative is a private code: touching an ear, moving a finger over your cards, resting your chin. Traditional rules allow each partnership to work out its own. In tournaments, read the rules first, because each organiser may limit what it accepts. A private code only works if both partners use it automatically: an invented signal that takes your partner a while to decode gives more away than a familiar one.

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Frequently asked questions

Are signals allowed in truco, or is it cheating?

They are allowed. In partnership or team truco, signals are permitted and part of the game. What is not allowed is showing each other your cards. Some local rules also ban signals under the table, such as nudges with the foot.

What is the signal for the ace of swords?

Raising both eyebrows, briefly. In Uruguayan truco the same signal is reserved for the two of the muestra, the highest card in that variant.

How do you signal a three in truco?

By biting your lower lip. It is one of the few signals that are the same in Argentina and Uruguay.

What is the truco envido signal?

The most widespread is tilting your head to one side or forward to show you have points worth fighting for. In some areas, wrinkling the nose is used. There is no general signal for each number of points.

Can opponents see the signals?

Yes, and they are entitled to use them. Signals are made in view of everyone, so catching your opponents' signals is as legitimate as making your own without being seen.

Can you invent your own signals?

Yes. Traditional rules let each partnership use its own code. In tournaments, check the rules, because the organisers may set limits.

Are signals used in two-player truco?

No, because there is no partner to communicate with. Signals are only used in four or six-player truco.

Are truco signals the same as mus signals?

No. The idea is similar, facial gestures in view of everyone, but in truco you signal specific cards and in mus you signal combinations. Some gestures appear in both with different meanings.

To practise all this you only need a 40-card Spanish deck and three other people keen for a game. If you are looking for a new deck for the card table, take a look at our selection of playing cards.

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Keep exploring

• Truco rules: envido, flor, calls and scoring
• Mus rules, with its signals and vocabulary
• The Spanish deck: complete guide
• Cheat rules: another bluffing game
• List of card games by type

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