Published card games
Cuarenta
Cuarenta is a card game. It is played with 2 to 4 players, from age 8 and in about 15 minutes.
- players
- 2–4
- minutes
- 15
- years
- 8+
This game’s rules aren’t on Marquoir yet: keep the ones from the box. Marquoir keeps score, times your games and records them.
About the game
Cuarenta is the national card game of Ecuador. It is a fishing game played with the standard 52 card pack of Anglo-American playing cards, but all 10s, 9s and 8s are omitted (ace is low).
This game is almost exclusively played in Ecuador. The name of the game, cuarenta is Spanish for the number 40 (forty). This refers to the number of points that are required to win a chica (small division of the game) and also to the number of cards used to play it. Two chicas or the first chica with zapatería (loss of the chica by scoring less than ten points) win the game (a completed game is called a "mesa", literally meaning "table", which in this context refers to "match"). The game can be played by 2 players, or 4 players split into two teams. Cuarenta is the national card game of Ecuador and even has official tournaments.
The score is kept with two kinds of chips, the two-point tantos (points) and the ten-point perros (dogs). When a standard 52 card pack is used, the 8s, 9s and 10s can be used to keep the score.Information from Marquoir’s game database, which cross-checks several open sources. Spotted a mistake? Write to us from the Contact page.