Mus (card Game) - Description

Description

The game is played between two opposing pairs of players with the Spanish deck which is a deck of 40 cards, without eights, nines, or tens and no jokers, and it has a variety of different rules in the different regions of Spain. The game has four rounds:

• Handia (Biggest): playing for the highest combination of cards.
• Txikia (Smallest): playing for the lowest combination of cards.
• Pareak (Pairs): playing for the best matching card combination.
• Jokoa (Game): playing for cards total values of 31 or more. Sometimes replaced by a Puntua (Point) special round.

In each of these four rounds players take by order a call each, verbalizing (usually after discussing it with his partner) whether if he/them will bid "enbido" or pass "paso" which only results in skipping call turn to next player. After all four players have called there should be any bet ("apostua") made; if none at all was made and all four players passed to bid, the round is "in pass" and will be decided at the end of the hand for a reduced value of just one point.

It has a distinctive feature in that passing some established signals (keinuak) between players is perfectly allowed during the game.

One other special feature of Mus is that it is a mostly verbal game, with little card-involving action, limited to deal and discard (if any). After cards are dealt and Mus (discard) is stopped, all rounds are played verbally, bets are called, passed, accepted or rejected but cards are not shown, dealt or touched in any further way, and the player is only obliged to show them in the end of the round if needed in order to resolve any accepted bet. This makes Mus more difficult to learn simply by watching others play than most other card games, as it can be difficult to follow simply by watching.