Scopa Rules — How to Play and Keep Score
Scopa is Italy's national fishing game, played with a 40-card Italian deck: ace through seven plus jack, horse and king in four suits. Cards are captured from a shared table, and the deal is scored afterwards from the pile you built. Clearing the table completely is a scopa — a sweep — and it is where the game gets its name.
Overview
Scopa is Italy's national fishing game, played with a 40-card Italian deck: ace through seven plus jack, horse and king in four suits. Cards are captured from a shared table, and the deal is scored afterwards from the pile you built. Clearing the table completely is a scopa — a sweep — and it is where the game gets its name.
Setup
Use a 40-card Italian pack, or a standard pack with the eights, nines and tens removed, treating diamonds as coins. Deal three cards to each player and lay four face up on the table. When everyone has played their three, deal three more, without adding to the table. Repeat until the deck runs out.
How to play
On your turn you play one card face up. If it matches the rank of a table card, you capture that card. If it does not, but it equals the sum of two or more table cards, you may capture that combination instead — a matching single rank always takes priority over a sum. If neither applies, your card stays on the table. Whenever a capture clears the table completely, mark a scopa, unless it happened with the very last card of the deal. Cards left on the table when the deck is exhausted go to whoever captured most recently.
Scoring
Score each deal from the captured piles. Four points are available every deal:
- Cards — 1 point to the side holding the most captured cards (40 in play, so 21 wins it).
- Coins — 1 point for the most cards of the coins suit (10 in play, so 6 wins it).
- Settebello — 1 point for holding the seven of coins.
- Primiera — 1 point for the best four-card combination, one card per suit, valued: seven = 21, six = 18, ace = 16, five = 15, four = 14, three = 13, two = 12, king, horse and jack = 10. Add your best card from each suit; the higher total wins. A side missing a suit entirely cannot compete for it.
Then add 1 point per scopa taken during the deal. Napola, if enabled, is added on top.
Cards, coins and primiera are withheld when tied, unless the tied-categories setting says otherwise. The settebello is never tied. A deal therefore scores at least 3 and normally 4 fixed points plus sweeps, so a typical entry is 1 to 4 and an exceptional one is 7 or 8.
Ending the game
The game ends as soon as a side reaches the target — 11 by default — counted at the end of a deal, never mid-deal. If both sides pass the target in the same deal, the higher total wins; if they are still equal, play another deal.
Common variations
Scopone deals the entire pack and removes the stock. Scopa d'Assi lets an ace scoop the table. Cirulla adds hand declarations. In Spain the same skeleton becomes Escoba de Quince, where every capture must total exactly fifteen.
Scoring at a glance
| Who wins | First to target |
|---|---|
| Played to | 11 points by default |
| Score sheet | One number per player per round, with a running total |
| Typical round score | 0 – 8 |
| Negative scores | Never — scores only go up |
| Worth knowing | One number per side per deal. Four points are on offer every deal (cards, coins, settebello, primiera) plus one per sweep, and any of the four can be withheld on a tie. |
Scopa — score sheet
House rules and settings
Every table plays Scopa a little differently. These are the 6 rules groups argue about. Each one is a setting in the app — and changing it recalculates a match that is already in progress, which is the thing no other score keeper does.
Play to: what is the default in Scopa?
The first side to reach this total wins. Eleven is the classic Italian target; groups who want a longer evening use 16, 21, 31 or 41.
Default: 11. Adjustable from 5 to 61 in steps of 1.
In the app: “Play to”.
Score primiera: on or off in Scopa?
Primiera is the fiddliest point of the deal — the best four cards you hold, one of each suit, measured on a special scale. Turning it off leaves three fixed points plus sweeps, which is much faster to settle.
Default: on.
In the app: “Score primiera”.
Napola bonus: what are the options in Scopa?
A napola is holding the ace, two and three of coins after a deal. Some tables pay a flat three points for it, others pay one point for every card in the unbroken run, so ace through six pays six.
Default: No napola. Three options:
In the app: “Napola bonus”.
Play in partnerships: on or off in Scopa?
With four or six players you can score as two teams instead of individually, which is how Scopone is played. Captured cards go into one shared pile per team.
Default: off.
In the app: “Play in partnerships”.
Last capture counts as a sweep: on or off in Scopa?
At the end of a deal any cards still on the table go to whoever captured last. Normally that is not a sweep; switch this on if your group awards a point for it.
Default: off.
In the app: “Last capture counts as a sweep”.
Tied categories: what are the options in Scopa?
What to do when two sides hold exactly the same number of cards, the same number of coins, or an equal primiera. Withholding the point is standard.
Default: Nobody scores the point. Two options:
In the app: “Tied categories”.
Variants of Scopa
Scopone Scientifico
Four players in partnerships, the whole deck dealt out at once, nothing left in stock — the tactical version of the game.
Scopa d'Assi
Playing an ace captures every card on the table. It counts as a sweep only if the table was already empty by the usual rules.
Cirulla
A Ligurian version with bonus declarations for a hand summing to fifteen or less, and extra rules around sevens.
Escoba de Quince
The Spanish cousin, where every capture must add up to exactly fifteen.
Scopa is also known as
Scopone, Scopone Scientifico, Sweep, Escoba. These are the same game — the rules and the score sheet above apply to all of them.
Keep score offline
The sheet above works in your browser. Cardzo for iPhone remembers your players, survives a closed tab, and works in a field with no signal.
Coming to the App Store.