Ottocento details

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Ottocento is described ...
https://www.pagat.com/tarot/ottocento.html

The webpage has ...
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Immediately below the 5 of trumps come the four Moors. Two look the same, the other two look different, but all have equal rank during the play.

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The Bégato is standing behind a table. He is the lowest trump, and is valuable as a counting card, as one of the tarocchi, and for his role in sequences.

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The Matto is not a trump. He beats nothing but a drum (see rules of play).
Somewhere else one can read (I've forgotten where), that the numbers on the Bolognese Tarocchino developed late and that somebody was puzzled by the numerology:

no number: Fool = Matto
no number: Pagat = Bagattino
no numbers: 4 Moors = Africano
numbers 5-16 : 12 numbered cards from Love-Amore till Star-Stella
no numbers: Luna, Sole, Mondo, Angelo

If one assumes 0 = Fool, 1 = Pagat, then 4 Moors, and then 5-16, one can detect, that the 4 Moors have only 3 empty places (at 2, 3 and 4).
But there is this funny ... Two look the same, the other two look different ... and one can see, that there are 4 Moors, but only 3 motifs. A card maker with his own ideas had found an answer on the mistake in the counting system.

I looked at an old Tarocchino (before the number change of the Tarocchino) and it had 4 different moors, and I looked at a Tarocchino deck in my possession (remake of a deck of c1810), and it has 4 equal Africano , and the deck of Pagat.com seems to be of a younger date.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Ottocento details

2
It's not a mistake in the number system, Huck. The numbers are not meant to give a card's ordinal place in the series, for purposes of deciding priority in a trick (although it does do that, except for the first five and the last four); they are scavezzo numbers, for the purpose of calculating the score of the other side's Granda. It is the number on the card that breaks - scavezza - the sequence. See the four posts starting at viewtopic.php?p=26170#p26170, my two, then Ross's, then mine again. (Ross's rough translation of Pedini, which follows, doesn't discuss scavezzo numbers; it is possible that they are Pisarri's innovation; the tarocchi appropriati from Bologna, unlike at least one from Florence, don't use card numbers either.) The scavezzo number is a shortcut so that the team without the Granda can calculate its point value without having to see, visualize, or even register mentally [this last added next day] the opponents' cards as they are doing so. If the Granda goes all the way down to include the Love card, then the scavezzo number is zero. Under "scavezzo dalla granda" at https://www.pagat.com/tarot/ottocento.html, see point three and under it their fourth example (unnumbered). The cards above Star also do not have scavezzo numbers. These numbers appear to have been used before there were numbers on the cards, since Pisarri gives them in his book, 1754 (p 40, in archive.org, a screenshot of which is at the link just given).

Your observation may, however, explain why two of the Mori look alike: a card maker who didn't know the game may have decided to repeat a motif as though it were the same Moro on two cards, so as to justify the Love card being 5.

But the two Mori who look alike are distinct cards, each worth 5 points in a Granda and contributing separately to the score of a sequence of Mori. In the latter, if a player has the two that look alike, it only takes one more, or a contatore (Matto, Begato) to make three, for 10 points, and the same for any other two Mori. See again the pagat site's discussion of the scoring of sequences.

Re: Ottocento details

3
I agree, that there is no mistake in the numbers of the Bolognese Ottocento ....
Card Points:
The basic values are as follows:

Tarocchi (Angel, World, Bégato, Matto) 5 each
Kings 5 each
Queens 4 each
Knights 3 each
Jacks 2 each
All other cards 1 each
There are 4 special cards, which get 5 points. Other Tarot traditions have only 3 cards with this category, Magician ("lowest card in the trump row", World or Angel ("highest card in the trump row") and the Fool.

Looking at other appearances of Fool and Magician, which are possibly or probably not the common 0 and 1, then we have ....

1. PMB-1, probably made at 1452 with 14 trumps, has lkely Nr. 1 for the Magician and Nr. 11 for the Fool. In this deck the Fool was possibly connected to sickness (goiter).


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2. The Rosenwald Tarocchi, where the trump card 1 shows a mix of elements of Magician (table attribute) and Fool (Fool's cap).



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3. The Tarocco Siciliano, which has two Fools without number (one named Misero, the other with common attributes) and trump Nr. 1 as a Magician. This deck has very unusual 2 highest trumps at Nr. 19 (Atlas) and Nr. 20 (Zeus).
Atlas was before a motif at the Mitelli Tarot in Bologna.

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Huck
http://trionfi.com
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