Briscola — rules & protocol

Briscola is a traditional Italian trick-taking card game. This app uses the classic two-player rules with a 40-card Italian deck. The goal is to capture more card points than your opponent. There are 120 points in the deck; more than 60 wins, exactly 60 is a draw.

• Two players sit opposite each other.
• The 40-card deck is shuffled. Each player is dealt 3 cards.
• The next card is turned face-up: that suit is the briscola (trump) for the whole hand. The rest of the deck sits on top of it as the draw pile.
• The non-dealer (or the host in this app) leads the first trick.

Four suits — Bastoni (clubs), Coppe (cups), Denari (coins), Spade (swords) — each with ranks 1–7, Fante (jack), Cavallo (knight), Re (king).

Only five ranks score. The rest are worth 0. Total of all cards = 120.

From strongest to weakest: Asso → Tre → Re → Cavallo → Fante → 7 → 6 → 5 → 4 → 2. Note that the 3 beats everything except the Ace, even though the King is higher in “face” rank.

1. Players alternate. The leader plays any card from hand.
2. In classic two-player Briscola there is no obligation to follow suit — the second player may play any card.
3. The trick is won by: (1) the highest trump if any trump was played; otherwise (2) the highest card of the suit that was led. An off-suit non-trump never wins.
4. The winner of the trick takes both cards into their captured pile and leads the next trick.
5. While cards remain in the draw pile, each player draws one card after the trick — winner first, then the other player. The face-up briscola is drawn last.

• When the draw pile is empty, play continues with the remaining cards in hand until none are left.
• Add up the points in each player’s captured cards.
• More than 60 points wins. Exactly 60 is a draw. (A common target in social play is “best of” several hands.)

• Save trumps and high cards (Ace, 3) for when they can take valuable opponents’ points.
• Leading a low card of a plain suit can force information about the opponent’s hand.
• Remember what high cards have already been played — especially Aces and 3s of each suit.
• The briscola under the deck is public knowledge; plan around that suit.

Kind

31250

NIP

NIP-01 + NIP-33

Default relay

https://nostr.relay.hedwig.sh

App tag

briscola-score

App pubkey (hex)

79be667ef9dcbbac55a06295ce870b07029bfcdb2dce28d959f2815b16f81798

Content is intentionally minimal — only the player’s username and their score for that match (0–120 points), plus a schema version field. No hand history, no opponent name, no room code.

{
  "v": 1,
  "username": "alice",
  "score": 72
}

1. Check event.kind matches the Briscola kind
2. Check event.pubkey equals the app public key
3. Check the app tag is present
4. Validate the Nostr signature (NIP-01) against the app pubkey
5. Parse content JSON and require v === 1

The private key lives only on the server. Clients call a signed-in server function to publish; they never hold the app secret. Filtering on the public key is enough to ignore forgeries that claim to be scores.

79be667ef9dcbbac55a06295ce870b07029bfcdb2dce28d959f2815b16f81798

[
  [
    "d",
    "alice"
  ],
  [
    "app",
    "briscola-score"
  ],
  [
    "username",
    "alice"
  ],
  [
    "score",
    "72"
  ]
]

• d — NIP-33 identifier; lowercased username. One latest score per user.
• app — always the app tag value briscola-score
• username / score — indexed copies for relay filters

[
  "REQ",
  "briscola-scores",
  {
    "kinds": [
      31250
    ],
    "authors": [
      "79be667ef9dcbbac55a06295ce870b07029bfcdb2dce28d959f2815b16f81798"
    ],
    "#app": [
      "briscola-score"
    ],
    "limit": 50
  }
]

Default relay WebSocket: wss://nostr.relay.hedwig.sh