A trick-and-trump card game of the “goat” family: lead, beat with a higher card or a trump, score fewer points and don’t collect the word “GOAT”. Everything you need to know before a game.
Burkozel is a trick-taking card game from the “goat” family. The deck has 36 cards, and every high card carries points. In each hand players lead and beat cards, and tricks bring points to whoever takes them. The most dangerous thing is to lose the hand: whoever scored the most points in it gets one letter of the word “GOAT”.
Whoever is first to spell the whole word “GOAT” (all four letters) loses the game and becomes the “goat”. So the strategic goal is to take as few points as possible and dump expensive cards on your opponents.
From 2 to 4 people play with a 36-card deck (from six to ace in four suits). Each player is dealt 6 cards. Card points are fixed: ace — 11, ten — 10, king — 4, queen — 3, jack — 2, while sixes, sevens, eights and nines give no points. The deck holds 120 points in all.
The bottom card of the deck is turned up and sets the trump — the suit that beats any other. The player who starts the hand leads first (in a new game, you); afterwards the hand is started by whoever lost the previous one.
Each player gets 6 cards. The card turned up under the deck sets the trump suit for the whole hand — it is shown by the deck and in the right-hand panel. A trump is higher than any non-trump card.
The leader places one card on the table — this is the lead suit. It starts a trick, and the other players must respond to it in turn.
To beat the lead card, put a higher card of the same suit or any trump on top. A trump always beats a non-trump card; a trump can only be beaten by a higher trump.
If you have nothing to beat with or it is not worth it, the player presses “Take” and picks up all the cards from the table — along with their points. Rank order within a suit: ace, king, queen, jack, ten, nine and down to six.
When everyone has responded, the trick goes to the player whose card was the strongest (the highest trump or the highest card of the lead suit). Its points go into that player’s pot for the hand.
The winner of the trick (or whoever “took”) leads next. Tricks continue until no cards are left in hand — after which the hand is scored.
When no cards are left in hand, the points of all the cards each player has taken are added up. The player who scored the most points loses the hand — that is who gets one letter of the word “GOAT” (letters are added in order: G, O, A, T).
The points scored are also totaled into the overall game score and shown on the board, but it is the word that decides the outcome. As soon as someone collects all four letters, they become the “goat” and lose the game — it ends. Resigning counts the whole word “GOAT” at once.
Don’t beat small cards with a trump without need — save them for the opponent’s aces and tens.
Lead with low, point-free cards. If they are taken, your loss is minimal.
An ace and a ten are 21 points between them. Try to dump expensive cards on your opponents.
Beat with the minimally sufficient card so you don’t give up your high cards too early.
In Burkozel the winner is not the one who takes many tricks, but the one who scores the fewest points. The whole deck is worth 120 points, and almost all of them are hidden in the four aces (11 each) and four tens (10 each) — that is 84 points out of 120. So the fate of a hand is decided by eight cards, and all the rest of the small stuff is merely a tool to fob those eight off on your opponents.
Keep track of how many expensive cards have already gone and to whom. As long as an ace or a ten is going round the table, any trick of yours is potentially expensive — don’t expose yourself to it with a high card without need.
Start a trick with a point-free card — a six, seven, eight, nine. If it is taken, you lose nothing, and the opponent spends something more valuable to beat it.
Trumps beat anything, so they are your main resource against others’ aces and tens. Trading them for worthless small cards is like spending a trump ace on an opponent’s six.
Try to throw your own aces and tens into tricks that an opponent is sure to take, not you. Let the points fly into someone else’s pot.
On the left — 21 points in two cards, on the right — zero in two: all the arithmetic of Burkozel is hidden in the aces and tens.
Within a single trick you have three decisions: what to lead, what to beat with, and whether to take at all. Each of them is a choice between immediate strength and a reserve for the future. A good player beats by a hair and saves high cards for the moment when they really decide things.
The nine of diamonds is better beaten with the king of the same suit than by burning a trump six — a trump is worth more as a resource.
If a nine can be beaten with a jack or a king — take the jack. The king will still be useful against an ace, and there is never a need for extra strength in a trick.
Sometimes taking a cheap trick is better than beating with a trump. Count it up: if only small cards are on the table, “Take” costs you a couple of points, and you keep your trump.
Leading a trump pulls trumps out of everyone at once — which more often helps whoever has more of them. Lead a trump first only if you want to disarm an opponent.
Remember the rank order within a suit: ace, king, queen, jack, ten, then nine and down to six. Note the oddity — the ten is lower than the jack in strength but worth five times as much. That is exactly why the ten is so easy to “gift” to an opponent under their king or ace.
On muta.pro Burkozel is played with a 36-card deck, 6 in hand, from 2 to 4 people, and the loser is decided by the word “GOAT”. The number of participants noticeably changes the tactics, though the rules stay the same.
With two the deck is known almost entirely: 12 cards in hand, one in trump, the rest in the discard. Counting the remaining aces and tens is easiest here, and the one who counts more precisely wins.
More players means more cards in a trick and less predictability. Dump expensive cards when the trick is already guaranteed to go not to you but to the neighbor on your left or right.
The card turned up under the deck sets the trump for the whole hand. If you have many trumps — play aggressively; if few — save them and win on the point count.
The result of a hand is not a sum of points but a letter to whoever scored the most. Four letters of “GOAT” — and the game is over. “Resign” counts the whole word at once instantly.
Three trumps in hand (hearts are trump) — a signal to play on the attack and pull others’ aces out under your trump one.
Most losses in Burkozel are not bad luck but typical blunders. Let’s go through the four costliest, so you stop handing the opponent letters of the word “GOAT”.
The “Hint” button on muta.pro suggests what to lead or beat with. It helps a beginner to check against it until a feel for trade-offs develops.
The cards valid to play are highlighted in gold — but the highlight shows only allowed moves, not the best ones. Choosing the cheapest of them is up to you.