How to Play Cuarenta

Cuarenta is Ecuador's national card game — a sharp-witted fishing game played with a 40-card deck. Capture cards from the table by matching, by adding them up, or by chaining a run above your card's rank, and race to 40 points to win the chica. Learn the rules here, then play free as part of our Ultimate Scopa Collection.

Overview

Cuarenta ("forty") is Ecuador's most popular card game, and like its cousins Scopa and Escoba it belongs to the "fishing" family — you capture cards from a shared table instead of winning tricks. What sets Cuarenta apart is its capture-and-chain mechanic: land a capture and any unbroken run of higher cards sitting right above it comes along for free, which can turn a single well-timed play into a table-clearing sweep. Play alone against a single opponent, or as a team of two facing another pair across the table.

How to Play

1. Deal. Every player is dealt 5 cards from the 40-card deck. The table starts completely empty — there's no initial table layout like in Scopa or Escoba.
2. Play a card. On your turn, play one card from your hand to the table.
3. Capture if you can. If your card's rank matches a card on the table, or two or more table cards add up to its value, you must capture — this isn't optional when a capture is available.
4. Chain the sequence. After a match or sum capture, any unbroken run of higher-ranked cards continuing up from your card is captured too — play a 4 that matches or sums to a 4 on the table, and a 5, 6 and 7 sitting right above it get swept up as well.
5. Otherwise, discard. If nothing on the table can be captured, your card simply joins it.
6. Redeal. Once everyone has played all 5 cards, another 5 are dealt to each player from the stock. This repeats until the full 40-card deck has been played out.
7. Score the hand. Tally up captures and bonuses, then keep dealing fresh hands until one side reaches 40 points — the chica.

Card Values & Sequence Order

• Ace — worth 1
• 2 through 7 — worth their face value
• Face cards (Sota/Caballo/Rey, or the plain 8-9-10 in a French-style deck) — worth zero. They can only be captured by an exact rank match, never as part of a sum.

Sequence order runs Ace-2-3-4-5-6-7, then straight into the face cards — Sota, Caballo, Rey (or 8, 9, 10 in a French-suited deck, where they're genuine numeral cards rather than face cards). Card art can be French, Spanish, Napoletane or Sicilian; the values and sequence order are identical regardless of style.

Bonuses

• Caída (Fall) — +2. Capture, by an exact rank match, the very card the previous player just played.
• Limpia (Clean) — +2. Capture every remaining card, clearing the table completely. Land a caída and a limpia on the same play and they stack for +4.
• Ronda — +4. If you're dealt three cards of the same rank, your team scores +4 immediately — but only while your team is still under 30 points. Four of a kind in a single hand wins the game outright, on the spot.

End-of-Hand Scoring

Once all 40 cards have been played, whoever captured more cards scores extra points:

• 20 or more cards captured — score +1 for every card beyond 20, rounded up to the next even number.
• Neither side reaches 20 — the side with more cards captured scores +2 instead.

Once a team reaches 38 points, only a caída can close out the final 2 — card-count and limpia bonuses stop counting that close to 40.

Strategy Tips

• Play your Ronda early if you have one. A dealt three-of-a-kind is worth +4 the instant your team is under 30 — there's no reason to sit on it.
• Watch what your last card protects. Since capturing is mandatory, think ahead about what you'll be forced to play into on your next turn, not just what you can capture right now.
• Guard against the caída. Whatever you just played is the one card your opponent can capture for a guaranteed +2 — avoid leaving a lone, easily-matched card on the table if you can help it.
• Chase sequences, not just captures. A capture at the bottom of a long unbroken run is worth far more than the single card it looks like — count what's sitting above a card before you decide it's not worth taking.
• Slow down near 38 points. Once your team is that close to 40, only a caída finishes the game — factor that into which cards you hold back.

Frequently Asked Questions

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