Mus (1745)

This is a Spanish card game born in Basque Country. The first reference about this game goes back to 1745, when Don Manuel de Larramendi, philologist and Jesuit basque, quoted it the trilingual dictionary (Basque-Spanish-Latin).

It is played between two opposing pairs of players with the Spanish deck which is a deck of 40 cards, without eights or nines and no jokers, and it has a variety of different rules in the different regions of Spain. The game has four rounds:

* Grande (Biggest): playing for the highest combination of cards; handiak (big ones) in Basque.
* Pequeña or Chica (Smallest): playing for the lowest combination of cards.
* Pares (Pairs): playing for the best matching card combination; pareak in Basque.
* Juego (Game): playing for cards total values of 31 or more. Sometimes replaced by a Punto (Point) special round; jokua in Basque.

One other special feature of Mus is that it is a mostly verbal game, with little card-involving action, limited to deal and discard (if any). After cards are dealt and Mus (discard) is stopped, all rounds are played verbally, bets are called, passed, accepted or rejected but cards are not shown, dealt or touched in any further way, and the player only is obligued to show them in the end of the round if needed in order to resolve any accepted bet. This makes it a not too good card game to watch other people play, and learning to play it through only watching is rather difficult in comparison with other card games.

For further information about Mus visit: http://www.ludoteka.com/mus-en.html

Also you may visit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mus_(card_game)

(Both sites are in English and Spanish language)

The game is very traditional in parts of Spain. In Spanish dictionaries, the word 'mus' now means 'a card game' rather than its original meaning (which someone once told me was 'a nut', referring to the stones used by peasants).