Everyone wants to play Burraco, many try to explain it, very few manage to do both well. If it's true that you can't always win, why in Burraco fate has its say, it is equally true that (un)luck can be tamed and how.
"Burraco - Instructions for use" is a manual, written by the journalist and with the great game lover Maria Teresa Scorzoni, useful to avoid the most common mistakes, to learn to divide tasks, to spend wisely, to play and counterplay, to trap opponents and escape from their grip - but also to share legitimate tools to communicate at the table. In a nutshell, it will teach you to play Burraco better, stimulating logic and imagination.
The author, who has a wealth of tournament and writing experience, illustrates the game with precision and shares her strategies with wit and lightness, addressing Professor Kenneth W. Regan, one of the brightest mathematical minds in the world, to explain what to do with our sequences and combinations. Published by Caissa Italia publisher, is arriving in bookstores these days.
What is Burraco (from the introduction of the book)
Burraco is a card game of the Rummy family, but the definition is not exhaustive, because over the years this pastime has become much more: a language, a craze, a fashion, a pass, a watchword, a full-time job. Burraco unleashes a dedication in those who practice it that deserves to be studied more carefully. It's a social phenomenon that has given new life to millions of vintage girls who, thanks to this new friend, have started going out again in the evening, taking care of their look, rethinking their holidays.
Over time the success of Burraco has gone beyond the narrow circles of ladies conquering men, boys and girls, boyfriends, girlfriends even children. In two and two four he busted Canasta, Kalooki and Rummy, while the Bridge, stunned and offended, has holed up in the clubs, like an aristocrat who no longer understands the world he lives in. These games, with Poker, still reign in the world of gambling and on the Internet, but Burraco has become the master father in the family.
The game goes wild everywhere, capturing thoughts and offering a home route to Nirvana, a few hours of total painlessness, without too much expectation in terms of great illuminations. Don't say that playing Burraco is a waste of time, because time lived in serenity, keeping the mind alive, is never wasted. In Italy it has been played for about forty years (perhaps fifty? The margins of error are wide) and its fortune has had a geometric progression, until it reached its peak in the new millennium. Anyone who does not know it is cut off from a large part of social life and where Esperanto (the universal language) has failed, Burraco has succeeded, managing to make people of different social backgrounds, cultures, tastes and nations talk to each other.
The author
Maria Teresa Scorzoni, after graduating in law, found her outlet in the journalistic profession specializing in economics thanks to her long collaboration with Il Sole 24 Ore. Today you cover the stock market for the financial site FIRSTonline.
However, his heart beats for golf and Burraco, which he practices constantly at a competitive level. In Burraco she boasts a respectable palmarès: she won the national tournaments Fibur of Stresa (2006) and Fibas of Salsomaggiore (2010) and reached the podium at the national Fitab of Montegrotto (2016). You also have a collection of top ten in national, regional, city, village, parish, home tournaments.
She is the author of the successful booklet Golf, a small guide to the sport of elegance but, to use her own words, Burraco – Instructions for use is her «most suffered, meditated, original and complete» book.
