Card Games in Colombia

Dear Chelsea,

Welcome to the Colombia forums of expat.com ....

----

Well, leave it to a student in Hanoi, Vietnam, to inquire about card games in Colombia -- such as 'Tute' -- and wishing to move to the obscure town of Hatillo de Loba in the northern Colombia province of Bolívar.   Fun fact... 'loba' is Spanish for she-wolf.

----

I have played hundreds of hours of card games over the course of recent years as offered in casinos in Medellín, Armenia (Quindío) and Ipiales (Nariño).

Not a single hour was played at the game of 'Tute' .. which my research tells me is a game originated two centuries ago as 'Tutti' in Italy, has an arcane set of rules and uses a Spanish or Italian deck of 40 cards.

If this game was offered in Colombian casinos where I played, I would have noticed it.  Perhaps, like bridge and poker, it is not a casino-banked game, but often is played amongst friends.

cccmedia

On my most recent card-playing trip to Colombia (pre-covid), I often played my game -- blackjack a.k.a. 21 -- at a casino in Ipiales, a border town near the 'frontera' with Ecuador.

As far as I could determine, this was the only casino offering card games of any kind between Cali, Colombia, and northwestern Peru -- a stretch of about 700 miles.  Ecuador, where my condo is located, eliminated such games and closed its casinos seven years ago.

A blackjack table in Ipiales opened just after 4 p.m. daily in a mostly-slots casino on the top floor of the biggest shopping mall in the city.  The game continued till past midnight, although I almost never played late.

Usually just one or two players were in action during the first hour of the day.  Things got busy after 6 p.m., when a second 21 table with higher limits was usually opened.  Most of the players were men, although play by women was common.  Ages of players varied considerably, with small groups of young men in their 20's or early 30's sometimes dominating.

Minimum table bets were 5,000 COP at the lower-stakes table, sometimes raised to 10,000 COP minimum.

Cards were dealt from a five-deck dealing shoe.  The liberal rules included double after split and surrender (except against a dealer ace).  Similar rules including dealing from a plastic shoe applied in all cities where I have played.

On earlier trips to Colombia, I played blackjack at two casinos in Armenia, until one casino closed its only table .. and later, the other one boosted its minimum betting limit beyond what I like.

cccmedia

I played blackjack at a number of casinos along Medellín's Golden Mile.

Unlike in the other two cities where casinos were typically located in shopping malls, the ones I visited in the Paisa capital were usually in stand-alone venues.

The table games in MDE were open from early afternoon until 1 or 2 a.m.  Minimum bets at 21 were usually 5,000 COP.  A player was allowed to play up to three hands at table minimum for each spot when the table wasn't too busy.  This rule applied to the games in all three cities.

cccmedia

Here are two links explaining the card decks that might be in use in Colombian households, patterned after the Spain style:

https://www.wopc.co.uk/colombia/cantaclarohttps://www.wopc.co.uk/colombia/

The Spanish deck of cards may have 40 or 48 cards, but they also use the standard 52 card deck.

Toruro is a 3-card gambling game popular in the departamento of Santander:

https://www.pagat.com/rams/toruro.html

This page on Colombian card games lists only two games, Toruro and King:

https://www.pagat.com/national/colombia.html

Outside of casinos I have never seen Colombians playing card games.  I think most Colombians are more likely to play the game of dominoes, dominó.