Court Piece rules

Also called Rang, Coat Piece, Rung and Hokm

Court Piece is a four-player trick-taking card game played in two partnerships across India and Pakistan. It uses a standard 52-card pack, takes about ten minutes a round, and every family plays it slightly differently. These are the rules as they are actually played, with the common house variations noted where they matter.

What you need

• Four players, in two partnerships
• A standard 52-card pack
• Partners sit opposite each other, so play alternates between the teams

The deal

The dealer gives each player five cards first — not the whole hand. This is the part newcomers get wrong, and it is the heart of the game: the rang is chosen on five cards, before anybody knows what else is coming.

1. Five cards each.
2. The player to the dealer's right looks at those five and names the rang (the trump suit).
3. The rest of the pack is then dealt out, so everyone finishes with thirteen cards.

Who chooses is settled at the start by drawing cards — highest card wins the right to call the rang.

Playing a haath

A haath is one trick: four cards, one from each player.

• The lead player plays any card. Everyone else must follow that suit if they hold it.
• If you have no card of that suit, you may cut with a trump. Even the two of trumps beats the Ace of a plain suit.
• If you cannot follow and choose not to trump, you may throw anything — it cannot win.
• Highest trump wins. If no trump was played, the highest card of the suit led wins.
• The winner leads the next haath.

Winning the round

Thirteen haath are played. Seven wins the round — the first partnership to take seven has won it, and there is no need to play the rest out unless you are chasing a kot.

Kot — the court

Taking all seven before the opponents take even one is a kot (a "court"), and it counts double. This is what everyone at the table is actually chasing, and it is why the game is called Court Piece.

Scoring

Some families play kot-only scoring, where nothing counts except courts. It makes for a longer, crueller evening.

The rules families argue about

Almost every disagreement at a Court Piece table is one of these:

• Who deals next. Most tables keep the deal with the losing side until they win a round.
• Ace on Ace. Some houses forbid trumping a trick your partner is already winning.
• Trump on the first haath. Some forbid cutting on the opening trick.
• Seven or all thirteen. Whether you stop at seven or play the hand out to hunt a kot.

None of these is more correct than the others. They are house rules, and the right answer is whatever your family has always done.

A first strategy

• Call the rang in the suit you hold most of, not the suit with your highest card.
• Lead your longest suit — you will force out trumps and set up your later cards.
• Watch what your partner discards. A thrown-away suit is usually a message.
• Count the trumps. When they are gone, your long plain suit wins on its own.

Other names for the same game

Court Piece is known as Rang or Rung across Punjab and Pakistan, Coat Piece in much of India, Hokm in Iran, and it is a close cousin of Hukum in Sri Lanka. The rules on this page are the ones common to all of them.