Misère is a card game for four players derived from briscola. It is played with 52 cards from a French deck without jokers. The game is divided into six deals: the first five involve "calls" (with the possibility of obtaining bonus points), while the sixth involves only penalties for a non-zero number of tricks. Each deal therefore has different objectives. At the beginning of each of the first five deals, players, in counterclockwise order starting from the player to the dealer's right, declare how many tricks (or "hands") they think they can win based on the cards they hold. If a player believes they cannot win any, they can declare misère, or zero tricks.
In deals 1–5, the last person to bid, the dealer, cannot choose a number that makes the total sum of the bids equal to 13. This prevents any agreements between the players and mathematically guarantees that at least one player will "bust" (i.e. fail to meet the exact number of tricks bid).