Common threads: playing Briscola

When I first lived in Italy years ago, before the Internet and Email, my social life consisted of failed attempts at finding English language news on short wave radio and doing the crossword puzzle in the USA Today newspapers that occasionally found their way to the newsstand at the Mantova train station.

I resided in an apartment above a pizzeria adjacent to the train station. Every time the 10:14 express to Milan, or any number of assorted other trains, rumbled by, my apartment would shake as though it were perched atop an unstable volcano. Because my residence was also adjacent to a motorway the locals called "the street of trucks" it would also shake anytime a vehicle possessing more than four wheels would zoom past.

This constant rattle and commotion sometimes made it impossible to decipher any radio transmissions or come up with the answer to 26 down or 35 across. That left me no choice but to escape my apartment to find some peace, or to go to the nearest bar to drink a Campari with soda, or to even take a seat in a pew in Mantova's massive cathedral, the quietest and emptiest place, perhaps, on the entire planet.

The times my refuge consisted of that medicinal Campari with soda, a sobering and bitter tonic that could make any person's mundane day seem sweeter by comparison, I always found myself in the same small neighborhood bar across the street of trucks from my apartment. While sipping, grimacing at the pungent aftertaste of my beverage, I would observe the older gentlemen sitting at neighboring tables playing a game with cards I had never seen before. This was my first exposure to a game called Briscola.

These cards are from the Piacentine deck.  Because of its clean, yet elegant, design it is my favorite. 

I couldn't exactly figure out how the game worked, because these older gentlemen were playing for money and were deadly serious in their demeanor, no conversation, except a few mocking comments in Italian dialect when a game was done, pride was gained, and lire changed hands. Fortunately, I had a couple of Italian acquaintances, with whom I could communicate, who purchased me a Briscola deck and taught me the game. Little did I know how a deceptively simple and fiendishly strategic card game would serve as a common thread throughout my life.

A wonderful and distinguishing feature of Briscola is that each region of Italy has its own distinctive 40-card deck, with the four suits (coins, sticks, swords, and cups) depicted with radically varying design concepts. I soon became enamored with pursuit of the various kinds of Briscola decks whether they were Roman, Sicilian, Neapolitan, or Sardinian. As for the game itself, the object is simple: whoever captures the cards with the most value is the winner. How one gets to this victory is a bit trickier. The rules and strategies represent more than this blog entry can handle, but suffice it to say that Briscola has been called the quintessentially Italian game, in a somewhat flippant reference to the nation's lack of military success, because the winner is usually the person who best surrenders his valuable cards early in the game in order to gain the possibility of success in the end. One principle that must always be remembered and it's a principle that might also be applied to life: you cannot win a game of Briscola without, at times, surrendering.

This is the peculiar Sardinian deck. It stands in striking contrast to the Piacentine deck, almost to the point of seeming as though these are the cards of a different game. Notice the suspicious scenes portrayed in the 4 of each suit. Each Briscola deck has small nuances of meaning embedded in it. 

After leaving Italy, I took on the role of Briscola missionary, teaching the game to whomever was interested, particularly students with whom I have shared experiences. When I worked at the Castle in the Netherlands, I would introduce Emerson College students to Briscola before our field trip to Florence. They would then spend their Italian excursion happily in search all the variants of Briscola decks and would challenge me to games during the remainder of their time abroad.

When working with Latin American students studying in the U.S., I would introduce the game to Hondurans and Nicaraguans and Mexicans and Costa Ricans. Perhaps a dozen Costa Ricans on the entire planet know the game of Briscola and three or four of them were taught by me.

Even at camp this summer, a group of high school students from Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan joined me most every afternoon for a leisurely Briscola matchup--probably the only seventeen-year-olds in their respective countries to have ever acquired this delightfully useless skill.

And perhaps the most important games of Briscola I play, are the ones I contest with my father whenever I visit him. It is a game I like to play with my father, because it is actually a rare thing that I have taught him. Though now we both seem to wade unsteadily through the passing of time, one of our first actions when we see each other again is to take the Briscola deck out from the small cupboard in which it resides. At one time in our lives, the score might have mattered, but now it is simply the acts of sitting near each other, placing cards on the table, finishing out the game, that carry with them the sense of victory, rather than calculating win or loss. It is one of our common threads, this game; though not terribly profound, it is still one of the tangible strings that binds the two of us together no matter where we are.

Last night, I taught a new group of students this Italian game of strategic surrendering as I find myself in yet another different place and time; I am amused that people from lands far from Italy like Pakistan and Tajikistan are sharing this game with me, the Briscola missionary from America. The common threads between people seem so few and spindly, even when one as insubstantial as this one is created, as foolishly naive as I may be, somehow it feels as though it might have some small power to bind.

Playing Briscola in Kyrgyzstan