Mus is a card game widely played in Spain, France and Hispanic America. Originating in the Basque Country, it is a vying game. The first reference to this game dates back to 1745, when Manuel Larramendi, philologist and Jesuit Basque, quoted it in a trilingual dictionary (Basque-Spanish-Latin).
In Spain it is the most widely played card game, spawning several Mus clubs or peñas and becoming a staple game among college students. It is not uncommon to hear the Basque terms, such as órdago (from Basque hor dago, "there it is"Real Academia de la Lengua Española) used by Spanish speakers, often without them being aware of the literal meanings of the terms and phrases.
The origin of the word Mus is uncertain. It could come from the Basque language, where musu means "kiss", the established signal of the better possible card combination (3 Kings and one Ace). Larramendi wrote about the word mus or "musu" meaning lips or face and suggests that the name of the game could have derived from the facial gestures used while playing.
According to another theory, the word "mus" comes from the Latin musso, that means "keep silent". It is conjugated as mus ("I keep silent"), in opposition to "talk", that is the word used to open the game.
A third hypothesis is that the word may have come from the French mouche ("fly"), from Latin mussula,Larousse Dictionnaire d' Étymologie Larousse:2001 although the concept "fly" has no relevance to any part of the game.
History Basque emigrants carried the game to other countries such as the US and Australia, where it is played in Basque clubs.North American Basque Organization Nowadays there is an international Mus tournament, in addition to many national and regional competitions.
Description The game is played between two opposing pairs of players with the Spanish deck which has 40 cards, without eights, nines, tens, or jokers. Mus has a variety of different rules in the different regions of Spain.
The game has four rounds: Handia ("Biggest"): playing for the highest combination of cards. Txikia ("Smallest"): playing for the lowest combination of cards. Pareak ("Pairs"): playing for the best matching card combination. Jokoa ("Game"): playing for cards total values of 31 or more. Sometimes replaced by a Puntua (Point) special round.
In each of these four rounds players take by order a call each, verbalizing (usually after discussing it with their partner) whether the partnership will bid (envido) or pass (paso) which only results in skipping call turn to next player. After all four players have spoken each round, the bids (apostua) made are left hanging until the scoring round at the end. If no bet was made and all four players passed to bid, the round is "in pass" and will be decided at the end of the hand for a reduced value of just one point.
It has a distinctive feature in that passing some established signals (keinuak) between players is perfectly allowed during the game.
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 is only obliged to show them in the end of the round if needed in order to resolve any accepted bet. This makes Mus more difficult to learn simply by watching others play than most other card games, as it can be difficult to follow simply by watching.
Rules
Mus is played by four players working as two teams. Partners sit opposite each other and play moves in a counter-clockwise direction.
Every hand consists of four rounds: Handia ("Biggest"), Txikia ("Smallest"), Pareak ("Pairs") and Jokoa ("Game"). If the "Game" round cannot be played because nobody has a hand total value of 31 or more, the whole round is replaced by Puntua ('Point'). After the fourth round, there is a scoring round, when all scores are calculated. The game is played with a pool of 30 points in the middle of the table. The points are usually represented by beans, coins or sometimes any other object, which are called hamarreko (oddly, from Basque "unit of ten", although it is worth five tanto) when playing the game. When a point is scored by a couple, one of this couple players takes a bean and puts it on their team's side. To decrease the need for many beans, one player's side counts as one-point beans and the other side as five-point beans. This makes it possible to play with only 16 beans in the table.
A match (partida) is divided into games (joko). Each game is won by the first team to reach 30 points. In Spain, three games count as one vaca and three vacas win the match, although there are many other scoring variations, for example, in some places the game is played to five games and five vacas. However, in the Basque Country and northern Spain La Rioja, Mus may played with four Kings and at 40 points instead of the standard 30. This variation has to be played with 22 beans in the pool instead of 16. In the rest of Spain, the regular rules are eight Kings and 30 points.However, it is becoming increasingly common to play at 40 points. See Algarin, M. A., Ruiz, R. & Vazquez, B. (2010), Locos por el mus. Reglamento y manual para llegar a ser un campeón de mus (Crazy about Mus. Regulation and Manual to Become a Champion of Mus), Bubok Editorial. . When played with eight Kings, threes count as Kings and twos count as Aces. With eight Kings, it is much easier to get good hands and riskier to bet high.
Starting the game In the first game, the dealer is selected randomly. After that, the dealer will be the last game's first player. In this way, the speaking order changes in each game and all the players get to be the first one to speak at some point. The dealer shuffles the cards and their left hand player cuts the deck. After this, they deal four cards, one card at a time, to each player starting with the player to their right and finishing with themself. Once the cards have been dealt, they put the deck aside and the game begins. The first player to speak will be the player at the right hand side of the dealer. Being the dealer is disadvantageous because ties are solved by speaking order: in case of a tie the person who spoke first wins.
"Musa" or "Musik ez" Starting with the player to the right hand side of the dealer (known as Esku), each player declares whether or not they want to have a discard phase. By turns they say either "Musa" (to agree on discard) or "Musik ez". The turn to speak is as follows: 1 Esku. 2 His or her partner. 3 Second player (the one after "Esku"). 4 Fourth player, which is the dealer in the round and partner of the last. This position is commonly known as "postre" (last) as it comes last in the playing order, so that player has a somehow handicapped ability in that hand. This way the team that speak first can seem to render themselves vulnerable (being true or fake) letting the opposition know that their cards are not good enough, since they want to discard. The opposition team can then decide whether or not there will be mus.
Only if all four players agree, there is a discard phase (Mus), where they can discard up to all four cards or none at all. The dealer feeds to each player the requested cards one by one. After discard, the players repeat the process of discussing a new discard phase (Mus or not Mus) until at least one of them finally disagrees. If needed, the discarded pile can be reshuffled and dealt again as many times as needed. After a player refuses to have a new discard phase, the playing rounds begin. Of course, having one or more discard rounds will make the player and their partner get better cards, but the same applies for the opposing couple so this is the point to be considered regarding Mus.
The rounds
Handia The first round is called Handia. The two teams compete for the highest combination of cards. The highest cards in the Spanish deck are the Kings, followed by Knights and Jacks. In the variant game with eight kings, the threes work as the regular Kings and are therefore as high. For example, a hand like 'King-King-Knight-7' would be better for this round than 'King-Knight-Knight-7'. As it is a bidding game, if one team does not accept the bid then they may not win the hand even though they have higher cards.
Txikia The second round is the Txikia. The two teams compete for the lowest combination of cards. The lowest cards in the Spanish deck are the Aces. In the variant game with eight Kings, there are also eight aces, with the twos being the second set of aces. For example, a hand like 'Ace-Ace-5-Knight' would be better for this round than 'Ace-Ace-5-King'.
The Txikia is a round that is overtly despised by most players, since bidding to it reveals (or at least suggests, which can be used) that the player has quite low cards, thus putting the player in a weakened position in the remaining rounds (their Pair should be low, if any, and probably has no Game). Further to this, since all players probably have quite high cards, the chances of getting the bid accepted are scarce.
Pareak Before the third and fourth are played, players run a pre-round, declaring whether they have matching cards (Parerik). In this pre-round, the players announce by turns 'Pareak bai'(they have matching cards) or 'Parerik ez' (they don't have matching cards). Having matching cards means that two or more of the cards in their hands have the same face value. If none of the players in a team can play, the whole round is skipped and the other team will score the round in the scoring phase. If none of the four players has Pares, the whole round is skipped altogether.
The lowest combination of matching cards for this round is a single pair ('pareak'), followed by three-of-a-kind ('medial') and the highest Two-pair ('dupleak'). There is no special denomination for four-of-a-kind; it is considered as a Two-pair. Unlike in poker, in mus, Two-pair is a better combination than three-of-a-kind. This accounts for the fact that it is usually played with eight kings and eight aces, which makes three-of-a-kind easier to attain. In case of a tie, the combination with the highest value wins. A 'Knight-Knight-Knight-5' hand would beat 'Ace-Ace-Ace-King'. If two players had exactly the same pares combination, the tie is solved by speaking order: the player who spoke first wins. In the variant game with eight Kings, threes are Kings and twos are Aces for all purposes. This means that a hand such as 'King-3-2-Ace' is effectively a Two-pair of Kings and Aces.
Jokoa