About :

  • Biriba is a very famous traditional greek game. Its very similar to Burraco and arabian Banakil.
  • The most usual and probably the optimal form of Biriba is for four players playing in two fixed partnerships. The idea of the game is to help your partner by finishing the in hand cards by melding them on the table as sets.

Cards and distribution:

  • The Dealer is chosen randomly when the game starts and move to the next player each round
  • Every player is dealt 11 cards by the dealer. After the deal is over, another 22 cards are taken from the deck to form 2 side stack and they are called Biribaki which they will be used through the game and we will explain them later on.
  • The remaining cards will be faced down to perform the draw deck
  • The first card of the draw pile is put face up and its suit is the Trump suit. It has nothing to do with the game play it just related to scoring which will add value in certain cases which will be explained in the scoring section.
  • All "2" cards are wild cards which they can be used as a Joker.
  • The game has 4 Jokers.
  • Bariba is a set of 7 cards or more. We call it clean biriba if it has no wild card and a dirty biriba if it has any wild card. We Also call it Full Biriba if its a set with 13 cards.

How to play:

  • The aim is to lay all the cards down on the table. Cards have to be melded with at least of three consecutive cards of the same suit or more which called a "SET".
  • When a player turn comes he has to draw card , meld any available set and throw a card to the fire stack.
  • Players are not allowed to finish their first 11 cards unless their team have at least one melded biriba set and it doesn't matter if its a clean or dirty biriba.
  • Once a team has at least one melded biriba, both team members are allowed to finish their first 11 cards and draw their baribaki.
  • Once a team took their baribaki, the other one is due to the other team.
  • If a player finished his first 11 cards by ending his turn throwing the last card to fire then he will be given the baribaki but his turn will be ended.
  • As for the previous point, if the other team finishes all the cards while their opponent just draw their baribaki then the in-hand cards wont be calculated when scoring.
  • The round usually finished when a team member finishes his initial 11 cards and his team's baribaki. However, if no team managed to finish and the draw pile becomes empty then the round ends and the in-hand cards shall be calculated directly.

Scoring:

  • At the end of the play, each team scores positive points for the cards in their meld area, and negative points for the cards remaining in the players' hands. Each individual card has a value as follows:

Joker: 20     ACE: 15     2: 10     8/9/10/J/Q/K: 10      3/4/5/6/7: 5    

  • The team who reaches 2005 points first wins the game.
  • In addition, bonuses and penalties are scored as follows:

1- If a player finished his all cards including his team's baribaki, that player's team adds a bonus of 100 points.

2- A team that did not pick up their biribaki incurs a penalty of 100 points subtracted from their score and the cards in their biribaki do not count against the team.

3- If a player picks up their team's biribaki at the end of a turn (after their last card) but the play ends before their next turn, their team incurs a 100-point penalty but the cards in their unplayed biribaki do not count against the team.

4- Bonuses are scored for all melded biribas as follows:

Clean Biriba: 200

Dirty Biriba: 100

Trump Clean biriba: 400

Trump Dirty biriba: 200

Full clean biriba: 1000

Full dirty biriba: 500

Full clean trump biriba: 2000

Full dirty trump biriba: 1000