रंग · हुकम

Court Piece rules◈

Say how many tricks you will win. Then win exactly that many — because missing by one costs you all of them.

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Court Piece rules, and what the names mean

The game is Rang or Rung in Pakistan, where the word means trump. In parts of India it is Coat Piece or Coat Pees, and pees is the Hindi word for to deal. In Goa it is called Seven Hands, because in Indian English a hand often means a trick.

Kot, court or coat turns up across South Asian card games and as far as Somalia and Malaysia. It means a slam: one team taking every trick, or a run of consecutive tricks while the other takes none.

Four players in fixed partnerships, partners opposite. A standard 52-card pack, ranking A-K-Q-J-10 down to 2 in each suit. Both the deal and the play run anticlockwise.

How the trump is called

The first dealer is chosen at random. After that the dealer is always from the team that lost the previous deal, so the winners call the trump.

The dealer shuffles, the player to the dealer's right cuts, then five cards go to each player. That same player — the trump-caller — looks at those five and names the trump suit, without communicating with anybody. Then the rest are dealt in batches of four until everyone holds thirteen.

Calling on five cards is the whole skill. Four hearts and nothing else argues for hearts; scattered high cards argue for whichever suit holds the most of them.

Playing the tricks

The player to the dealer's right leads to the first trick. Follow suit if you can; if you cannot, play anything, including a trump. The highest trump takes the trick, or if no trump was played, the highest card of the suit led. The winner leads to the next.

Completed tricks are stacked face down in front of one player of the winning team, so everyone can see the count.

A player who fails to follow suit when able may correct it without penalty, but only before the trick is complete and turned over. If a revoke is found later, play stops and the other team scores a court outright.

What a court is, and the goon court

The object is to score courts. Three things earn one: winning the first seven tricks of a deal while the opponents win none, winning seven deals in succession, or being handed one by an opponent's uncorrected revoke.

If the dealer's team takes the first seven, that is a goon court — a humiliating loss for the side that called the trump. Goon, with a silent n, means horse manure.

A team that has already taken seven may carry on and try for all thirteen. That is a 52-court or bavney, counts as fifty-two courts, and is rare enough that most players never see one. There is no penalty for trying and failing.

Double Sir, the version most tables actually play

Double Sir, or Double Sar, changes one thing. The winner of a trick does not gather the cards: the trick is turned face down in the centre and the pile grows there.

Cards are collected only when the same player wins two consecutive tricks. That player takes the whole pile. Two consecutive tricks won by two different players of the same partnership do not collect anything.

To score a court in one deal of Double Sir, a team needs all thirteen tricks, not seven. The player who wins the thirteenth takes whatever remains in the centre.

The trick play otherwise matches call break rules, except that in Call Break the trump is fixed at spades and you play alone rather than in partnership.

Court Piece for 2 and 3 players

The partnership game is the real one, and four is what every description means. Two- and three-player adaptations exist, documented for Iran rather than for India.

For three, one of the twos is removed, leaving 51 cards dealt 5–4–4–4. A round stops as soon as one player has won more tricks than any opponent could reach by taking all the rest.

For two, five cards each are dealt. After the trump is called, the caller discards three face down and the opponent two, then they draw alternately from the stock up to thirteen each.

Common questions