What is briškula?

Briškula (Italian: Briscola (Bree-sko-la), Croatian: Briškula (Bree-shkoo-la)) is an Italian card game that is also played in Croatia. This tutorial will be targeted towards more of the Croatian side of Briscola rather than the Italian, even though both have no difference from what I have seen.

The game itself is pretty simple. First we need to have specific playing cards for Briškula, which look like this (Triestine cards):

Autor CCCKKK - Vlastito djelo postavljača, CC BY-SA 4.0, Poveznica

• The first row of cards are, in Croatian, called Špade (Shpa-deh), comes from italian Spade, meaning swords.
• Second row of cards are Kope (Coh-peh), comes from Italian Coppe, meaning cups.
• Third row of cards are Dinari (Dee-nah-ree), comes from Italian Denari, meaning coins.
• Fourth row of cards are called Baštoni (Bah-shto-nee), comes from Italian Bastoni, meaning batons, or bats.

How to play it?

In order to play the game, you need to shuffle the cards and place them face down, so that you see only the back of the cards, not their faces.
Then, you give the deck, still facing down, to another person, who must "chop" the cards — meaning they must split the deck (not necessarily proportionally). After the deck is split, they take the card beneath the part that was lifted, and then, using the other part of the deck, deal the cards to the players, giving each player 3 cards.
The card taken from beneath the split will be placed face up, and the full deck will be placed on top of it, making sure that at least half of the card remains visible.
This card is the briškula — meaning that if you play a card of the same suit during the game, it will win over all other cards played, regardless of their value, unless another briškula of higher value has been played.
If there are 3 players, you must remove one card, preferably a card with the number 2.
After you've done this, you can start playing.

The person who has not shuffled, dealt nor chopped plays first, the turns usually go counter-clockwise.

The cards 2, 4, 5, 6, and 7, have no points, these cards are called lišo (lee-sho). Cards with number 11 contain 2 points, number 12 contain 3 points and number 13 contain 4 points. Cards with number 3 has 10 points and cards with number 1 (know as an Ace, or As in Croatian) has 11 points. Points are called punta (or singular: punat) in briškule Croatian. There are in total of 120 punta's.
The cards 3 and 1 (Ace) are called "Karig"'s (Kah-reeg)

Each round, each person throw one card until the last person who has not thrown a card throws it, and by the cards you determine who takes it.
After someone has picked up the thrown cards, the person who picked the cards takes one card from the deck, and then counter-clockwise (counter-clockwise because the turns are counter-clockwise) till everyone has 3 cards in total again.

Who takes the cards?

For a person to take the cards, they must either throw a card that has a higher value than the first card thrown with the same image, or use the briškula.

For example:
There are three people, first person throws a 4 dinari, second throws 6 kopa and then you throw 7 dinari, your card has "higher value" (2, 4, 5, 6, and 7 cards have no punta value, they are determined by the number value) than the first card thrown so you can take it.
If, in that example, kopas were the briškula, then the second person takes it, because kopa is the briškula and the briškulas take everything.

Second example:
First person plays 4 kopa, second 13 špade, and you (third) play 3 kopa; this means you take the cards.
Why? Because the 3 kopa has higher (punta) value than 4, due to 4 kopa having no value, while 3 kopa has 10 punta's, and kopa is the first suit being played.

Third example:
First persons plays 2 dinari, second 7 dinari, and you play 4 baštoni; the second person takes the cards.
Why? Because the 7 dinari, even though it has no value like 2 dinari, the number is higher than 2, therefore they take the cards. If the briškula is baštoni, then of course you will take the cards.

Endgame

At some point, the deck will go away, and there will be no cards to take anymore.
If there are no more cards to take, you just go on and play like it's a normal game of briškula, without taking any cards.
After the game, you take the cards that you have taken and count the punta's (there are in total of 120 punta's).
The person with the most punta's wins the game.