The Susanville Basque Club will be holding their 23rd annual Mus tournament on Saturday, April 28th, at the Susanville Community Center, 115 N. Weatherlow Street.
Registration will begin at 8:30a.m. and the tournament, which will follow NABO Mus rules, will begin at 9:30.
The fee to enter the Mus tournament is $45 per person. Basque Club membership dues are $15 per person and must be paid as well. All participants must complete the registration form and any early registration is greatly appreciated
Lunch will include delicious lamb chops served with salad, cheese, bread and wine. For players, the cost of lunch is included in the Mus fees. For non-players lunch is $12.
For more information you can call Michelle Goni Zubillaga at (530) 257-5367 or (530) 310-0166.
Everyone is welcomed to watch and enjoy the action, even if you are not planning on playing in the tournament.
What is Mus you ask?
The game of Mus is affectionately called ‘Basque Poker’ and when you don’t have the cards the idea is to bluff your way to a win. It’s really four games in one and you must win 2 out of 3 games to win a match.
The game makes use of a deck of forty cards (the 8’s, 9’s, and 10’s are set aside).
As with most things Basque, it is not certain exactly where or when the game originated. In this case, the debate is not about the origins of the game but sometimes over which is the ‘real way’ of playing this entertaining game. There are several variations.
The standard form, adopted by NABO for the national championship and the international competition, is to play the game by the cards; meanwhile another version accepts the 3’s as kings and the 2’s as aces making eight kings and eight aces in the deck.
Yet another version takes this step further and makes the five of diamonds an additional king, totaling nine kings, etc. In the standard form, the game is played by four people split into two teams, but it is also sometimes played by six people divided into two teams of three.
Usually, this variety of rules is not a problem because any given community usually has one preferred way of playing.
Each year players come to Susanville from all over California, some from Nevada and even some from Oregon to compete.
