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The Italian fishing card game. Match a card or a sum to capture the table — sweep it clean for a bonus point.
Tap a card in your hand, then tap a table card to capture with it. If a table card has the same value as yours you must take that one; otherwise you may take any group of cards that adds up to your card's value. Tapping one card of a unique group takes the whole group. If nothing can be captured, tap your card a second time to leave it on the table.
Clearing the table with a capture is a scopa: one bonus point straight away. It does not count on the very last card of the hand. When the deck runs out, whoever captured last sweeps up the rest of the table.
Each hand of forty cards is then scored: one point for the most cards, one for the most coins, one for the seven of coins, one for the best primiera, plus every scopa. Beat the opponent's total (or tie) and the run continues; your score is every point you have collected along the way.
Scopa is decided by four small prizes, and they are not worth chasing equally. The seven of coins is a whole point on its own and can never be split, so if it is sitting on the table take it even at the cost of a bigger haul. Coins are the next priority: there are only ten of them and six wins the point outright, so a coin you capture is worth roughly two plain cards.
Primiera quietly decides more hands than beginners expect. It compares your best card in each suit, and the ranking is not the numeric one: a seven is worth most, then a six, then an ace, while the eight, nine and ten are the weakest cards in the whole deck for this purpose. That is why a seven is fought over and a ten is often the safest card to throw away.
When you cannot capture, you are choosing what to hand your opponent. Never leave the table summing to ten or less if you can help it — a single card then sweeps everything and hands over a scopa. Throwing a high card such as an eight or nine is usually safer than a low one, because low cards combine easily with what is already on the table.
Count what has gone. There are exactly four cards of each value, so once three sevens have been played the last one cannot be answered by a matching card. Late in the hand, remember that whoever captures last takes whatever is left on the table, which makes the final capture worth far more than a single card.