Briscan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Elaborate, historical French game | |
 A 'marriage' of the King and Queen of Clubs | |
| Origin | France |
|---|---|
| Type | Trick-taking |
| Players | 2 |
| Cards | 32 |
| Deck | Piquet pack |
| Rank (high→low) | A 10 K Q J 9 8 7 |
| Play | Alternate |
| Related games | |
| Brusquembille | |
Briscan is an 18th-century, French ace–ten card game for two players played with a 32-card piquet pack. It is a member of the marriage group of games in which the 'marriage' of a king and queen brings a bonus score, but briscan takes this simple concept to extraordinary lengths.
Briscan is a highly elaborate expansion of Mariage, the ancestor of the marriage family of card games.[1] It is also a member of the brusquembille family, a game which it began to oust in France in the late 18th century.[2] Its name is probably a diminutive of 'briscambille', an old name for brusquembille.[3]
The rules of briscan are first recorded in 1752 in La Plus Nouvelle Académie universelle des jeux and indicate that briscan evolved from a similar game called brisque, which, in turn, may have developed from brisquembille, whose rules were published in 1718 in the l'Académie universelle des jeux.[3]
Parlett describes it as a "Gothic extravaganza" and a game of "almost hysterical excitement and complication" that squeezed a "truly phenomenal range of scores and melds" from just a 32-card pack and two five-card hands.[2][1] By contrast its close cousin, brisque, is less complicated and more playable; as is briscan's successor and "more sober relative",[2] bezique, which reduced the number of melds and bonuses available.[3]
