History of Touti: what we know, and what we don’t

People usually learn Touti by watching others play, then sitting down at the table, with family or friends. The rules are handed down from one generation to the next, with no single reference text. That is what makes the game rich, and also why two tables don't always play in exactly the same way: target score, minimum bid, Ghna caps… Our page on variants presents several of them, compared with the app's rules.

This oral transmission has a consequence for anyone looking into its history: there are few old written traces of the game under this name. Any precise claim about a date or place of birth for Touti would, as things stand, be impossible to check.

The name is spelled in several ways: Touti, Tutti, Toutti, Tuti, Toti, or توتي in Arabic. These spellings mostly reflect how the word is pronounced, written down in different alphabets and languages.

The word looks like the Italian *tutti*, "all". The connection is tempting, but no reliable source allows us to say the name of the game comes from it. We prefer to present it as a mere resemblance.

While the origin of Touti is hazy, its equipment is better known. Touti is played with the Spanish deck, whose four suits (oros, copas, espadas and bastos: coins, cups, swords and clubs) belong to the family of so-called "Latin" suits. Cards of this type are recorded in Europe from the late Middle Ages, and they are still widespread today.

The 40-card deck has no 8s or 9s: each suit runs from Ace to 7, then moves on to the three court cards, the Sota (10), the Cabal (11) and the Rey (12). To learn all about this deck, see Spanish playing cards and the Touti cards.

Touti's vocabulary mixes several languages, and it may be the best historical witness we have:

• The names of the court cards, Sota, Cabal and Rey, come straight from the Spanish deck.
• The Ghna, the Rey and Cabal of the same suit together, has a name of its own in Touti. It is also called "compte".
• The bidding signals, AS, COMPTE, +10 and PASS (PASSE), are borrowed from French.

This mix shows a living game, one that has travelled between players speaking different languages. The Touti glossary gathers all these words, with their French, Spanish and Arabic equivalents.

Whatever its history, Touti can be recognised by a few strong features, all found in the rules applied by the app:

• a bid from 70 to 230, in which the team commits to a number of points;
• a coded dialogue between partners during the auction (AS, COMPTE, +10, PASS);
• the Ghna, capped by the size of the bid;
• the obligation to play higher and to trump, which makes every trick tense;
• a scoring system in which only the team that wins the hand scores the bid amount, up to 600.

For a long time, you needed four players in the same place for a game. Online play changed that: today you can meet your usual partners at a distance, or take on players from all over the world. In the Atlas Carta app, Touti is played with fixed rules, the same for everyone, which gives the game a common rulebook without erasing the traditions of family tables.

• When and where Touti took its current form.
• The certain origin of its name and of the word Ghna.
• The precise history of the Ghna caps and the bidding signals.