The beloved Italian fishing card game, capture cards by matching or adding to them, sweep the whole table for a scopa, and out-point your opponent.
Scopa is played with a 40-card Italian deck across four suits. Four cards sit face-up on the table. On your turn you play one card from your hand to capture: a card that matches a single table card by value must take that card, otherwise it can capture any group of cards that sums to its value.
Captured cards go to your pile. If your capture clears the entire table, that's a scopa, a bonus point. When the deck runs out, both hands are scored and the next deal continues until someone wins.
Scopa was a fixture of 18th-century Naples and already widespread across Italy by then, which puts its origins somewhere earlier and less well recorded.
The likeliest parents are two Spanish games, Primero and Scarabucion, played around the Neapolitan docks as early as the 15th century — where, by one account, pirates and fishermen gambled away what they had taken off merchant ships.
The name means "broom", and it is literal: clearing the table in a single capture sweeps it, and scores. That one rule turns an ordinary fishing game into a game of counting what is left, because every capture changes what the next player can sweep.
Scopa is a traditional Italian fishing card game prized for its blend of arithmetic and memory. This is an original, free browser version with a computer opponent, daily deals, and live online play, no download or sign-up.