Burako

Contact

If you have any problems or suggestion, please write to contact@alburako.com.

Help

To take from the stock, double click the stock tile.
To take from the discard, double click any tile of the discard pile.

To discard, click the desired tile (its border will turn red), and then click on the discard pile.

To rearrange a tile in hand, click the desired tile (its border will turn red), and then click the tile next to the target location.

To place a new meld, click on the Place new meld button. Then, click on the tiles that will form the new meld (their borders will turn red), and finally click on the button again to confirm.

To add a tile to an existing meld, click on the tile (its border will turn red), and then click on the target meld.

Rules

There are many variants of burako. This website implements the argentine-coastal variant.

The game is played by 2 or 4 players (in pairs).
There are 104 tiles numbered like two decks of french cards (that is: four suits, and numbers from 1 to 13), plus 2 wildcards (identified with a *).

Objetive: Be the first to reach 3000 points..

Preparation: Each player begins with 22 tiles (2 players) or 11 tiles (4 players) in their hand. Two dead are put aside, one for each player/team, with 11 tiles each. The remaining tiles are put on the stock pile.

Order of play: The game is played in turns. Each player begins their turn by picking up from the stock or discard piles, then placing tiles on the board, and finally discarding a tile on the discard pile to end their turn.
The round ends when a player goes out, that is, having already picked up their dead, has no more tiles on their hand.
When the round ends, points are counted, and a new round begins.

Turn: There are three parts to each turn, in order:

  1. Either pick up a single tile from the stock, or all the tiles in the discard pile.
  2. Optionally, place new melds on the team's area on the board, and add tiles to existing melds. You can't move tiles between different melds, or manipulate the opponent's board area.
  3. To end the turn, pick a tile from your hand and place it in the discard pile.

Beginning a round: The first player in a round takes a tile from the stock, and can decide to either keep it, or put it in the discard pile and take another. This can be done only once, at the beginning of each round.

Discard pile: You can pick up from the discard pile only if there are more than 5 tiles between the discard pile and your hand. If not, the player is forced to pick up from the stock.

Dead: The first player of each team that runs out of tiles in their hand has to pick up the dead, moving all its files to their hand.

Melds: There are two types of melds sets and runs.
Sets are 3 or more tiles of the same number, regardless of the colour. Example: [ 8a, 8n, 8z ].
Runs are 3 or more tiles of the same colour with consecutive numbers. After 13, you can place a 1. Example: [ 11r, 12r, 13r, 1r ].

Wildcards: Wildcards can be used to take another tile's place. Only a single wildcard is allowed per meld.
Within a meld you can move the wildcard around, but never pick it up, or move it to a different meld.
In addition to the two wildcards *, tiles number 2 can also be used as wildcards (when they're not placed in their natural position). Examples:
[ 8a, 8n, *r ] , [ 8a, 8n, 2z ] ,
[ 11r, 2a, 13r, 1r ] , [ 1r, 2r, 3r, *n, 5r ].

Canastas: canastas are melds with 7 or more tiles. They are mixed if they have any wildcards (including tiles number 2 acting as such), or natural if they have none.
Examples of natural canastas: [ 1r, 2r, 3r, 4r, 5r, 6r, 7r ] , [ 8a, 8n, 8r, 8n, 8r, 8z, 8z ].
Examples of mixed canastas: [ 8r, 9r, 10r, 11r, 2a, 13r, 1r ] , [ 8a, 8n, 8r, 2n, 8r, 8z, 8z ].

End of round: Each round ends the moment a player has no more tiles in their hand, and their team's dead has been picked up. It also ends if the stock pile runs out.

Scoring: At the end of a round, points are tallied. For each team:

If the team has at least one canasta, the points of the tiles on their board area are tallied in favour. Otherwise, they are substracted.
Finally, points for each tile that remains in a player's hand are substracted.
Each tile has a number of points based on its number: