Court Piece Rules: How to Play the Full Game

Court Piece rules in one breath: four players in two partnerships, a trump suit called from the first five cards, follow suit whenever you can, and seven of the thirteen tricks wins the hand. The game goes by many names (Rung, Coat Pees, Hukum, Troeff Call) and has never had an official rulebook; it is passed on at the table and it varies by region. What follows is written from play rather than compiled from other write-ups, checked against tables in urban and rural Sindh, in Punjab, and among players in Germany. Where a rule genuinely differs from one place to another, it says so instead of pretending there is one right answer.

Watch: the complete guide in six minutes

Everything on this page, played out on the real Rung table: the toss, the deal, calling the rung, following suit and cutting, the traditional count, the four modes, and the partner signals good players use. The narration is in Urdu; the full rules follow below in writing.

What you need

Four players and a standard 52-card pack, no jokers. You sit in fixed partnerships with your partner opposite you, so the turn order alternates between the two sides. Play and dealing both run anti-clockwise. A hand is thirteen tricks, and every card in the pack is dealt, so no cards are held back.

The toss for the first call

On the very first hand of a session there is no reason for anyone in particular to call the trump, so the table tosses for it. Each player picks one card from the pack and turns it face up, so everyone can see them. The team holding the most powerful card wins the toss, and that player calls the trump. If the two highest cards tie, the toss is simply repeated.

Dealing

The hakem, the player who will call the trump, receives five cards first. They look at those five, and only those five, and name the trump suit. The rest of the pack is then dealt in batches, four cards at a time, so that every player finishes with thirteen: five, then four, then four. The trump is therefore chosen on incomplete information, five cards out of the thirteen you will end up holding, which is what makes calling it a skill rather than a formality.

Calling the rung (turrup)

The called trump suit has many names. Rung is the common one, turrup is the correct Urdu, and hukum is heard widely too. Whichever you call it, that suit outranks the other three for the whole hand. A hakem who does not like those five cards has two ways out. They can ask for a redeal; the usual condition is holding nothing above a Ten. Or they can decline to name a suit at all and say the trump will be set by their thirteenth card, the teharvi: the suit of that last card becomes the trump, sight unseen. It is a gamble taken with a weak opening five, and both options are played.

Playing a trick

The hakem leads to the first trick, and play continues anti-clockwise, so the player on the hakem’s right plays next. You must follow the suit that was led if you hold it. If you have none of that suit you may play anything, including a trump, but you are never obliged to trump, and you may discard instead. The highest trump in the trick wins it; if no trump was played, the highest card of the led suit wins. The winner of a trick leads the next one.

Winning the hand, and who calls next

Take seven of the thirteen tricks and the hand is yours. Who calls the trump for the next hand depends on how the last one ended: win the hand you called and you keep calling; lose it and the call passes to the opposing side; and if you sweep every trick for a Court, the call moves across to your own partner. The call is a genuine advantage, so it has to be earned again each hand.

Scoring: the names are the numbers

A lost hand scores 0. A bare majority, seven tricks to six, scores 7. Call the trump and take all thirteen and you score 13; that is a Court, also said as Kot or Coat. Take all thirteen when the other side called the trump and you score 52: a Bavan, or Goon Court. Bavan simply means fifty-two, and bayasi means eighty-two, which is the score for the rarest call of all. In the open-hand challenge a player shows their cards to the opponents and declares they will sweep the hand anyway.

Rung tricks: play in sync with your partner

Court Piece is a partnership game. Talking about your hand is not allowed, so good players talk through the cards instead. These are the signals most tables read.

1. The first lead in a suit usually says the leader is weak there. If your partner keeps the rung and opens with clubs, read it as no Ace and no King of clubs.
2. Weak in that suit as well? Play your highest club so the trick stays with your side, then lead clubs again on the next trick.
3. Strong in it? Win the trick with a middle card, the Queen or the Jack. Your partner learns that you can look after clubs.
4. Once your own cards are good, switch to a suit you are weak in, hearts for example. That tells your partner where you need help.
5. If your partner is already winning a trick, throw your smallest card. A big card spent there is a trick lost later.

Count the rung

There are thirteen cards of the rung in the pack, and counting them is the habit that wins the most hands.

1. Start with your own. Hold four and the other three players share the remaining nine.
2. Count every trump that falls. When trumps are led and everyone follows, four go at once.
3. A player who does not follow a trump lead has none left. Remember who it was.
4. When every trump is gone, nobody can cut your Aces and Kings, so play them without fear.

The Sir variants

Single Sir counts every trick on its own, and taking the first seven in an unbroken run ends the hand immediately as a Court. Double Sir builds a pile that is claimed by winning two tricks in a row, so a hand can swing sharply late. Hidden Rung has no caller at all: the trump is set by the first off-suit card played, which means nobody holds the caller’s advantage and the hand is scored symmetrically.

Where the rules differ by region

Court Piece has never had a rulebook. It is passed on at the table, which means some of what gets written down as "the rules" is really one region's convention stated as universal. The clearest example is the word Court itself. Published summaries often define a kot as winning seven tricks. In urban Sindh, and in Karachi in particular, a Court means only one thing: all thirteen. Seven-to-six is simply a win. Neither is a mistake. They are different tables, and if you learn one and sit down at the other, that is the argument you will have.

The weak-hand escape varies as well. The teharvi above lets the thirteenth card set the trump; pagat.com, the card games reference, describes Double Sir tables where the caller names a later card instead, such as the seventh or the tenth, and its suit becomes trump. Pagat also records Double Sir tables that refuse a collection on the eleventh and twelfth tricks, and sessions where a side scores a court for winning seven deals in a row.

What our app plays

The online game leaves some of the table rituals out. In the modes with a caller, you call the first hand yourself against bots; in an online room the first caller is picked at random. The hakem has twenty seconds to call from five cards and may ask for one redeal if all five are below a Jack. There is no teharvi call and no bayasi challenge. Instead of 0, 7, 13 and 52, a match is kept in points: 1 for the calling side winning a hand and 3 for its Court, 3 for the defenders beating the call and 4 for their sweep, played to 3, 5, 7 or 10 points.

Table etiquette and fair play

Court Piece is a partnership game with no legal way to tell your partner what you hold, and the etiquette exists to keep it that way. Talking to your partner about the hand while it is being played is treated as plain dishonesty, not gamesmanship. Gazing across at an opponent’s hand, watching their cards rather than the table, is rude, and at most tables it is called out immediately. A large grey area sits around signalling: slapping a card down hard, tapping your last trump, an agreed code word, a look held a moment too long. None of it is formally legal, tables differ in how strictly they police it, and how much is tolerated is usually settled by who you are playing with rather than by any written rule.

Reneging, the one that actually decides games

The serious offence is not signalling but reneging: holding a card of the led suit, pretending to be void, and playing something else instead, then quietly burying the card you should have played. Because following suit is compulsory, hiding a card lets you dump a loser or steal a trick you had no right to, and a single revoke can decide an entire hand. Around a physical table it comes down to whether anyone was paying attention. Playing online removes the question altogether: the game only ever offers you the cards you are legally allowed to play, so a revoke is not something you can get away with. It is something you cannot do at all.

What the cards are called

At most tables the cards are not called by their English names. The Ace is the ikka, the King is the badshah, and the Queen is the begum or the malka; both are used. The Jack is the gola, or the ghulam, and both are used too. From there the names follow the numbers: the ten is the dahla, the nine the nahla, the eight the athi, the seven the satti, the six the chhikki, the five the panji, the four the chauki, the three the tiggi and the two the duggi. The suits have names too: hukam for spades, paan for hearts, eent for diamonds and chirya for clubs. And the ace of the trump suit has its own saying, turup ka ikka: the card nobody can cut, which is also what people call whoever turns a hard situation around. If you have only ever read the rules in English, this is the part that makes a real table sound unfamiliar for the first few hands.

Where these rules come from

Court Piece has no governing body and no published rulebook. What is written here is recorded from play by the person who built this site, across tables in urban and rural Sindh, in Punjab, and among players in Germany. It is not assembled from other write-ups, which is how the same few errors keep getting copied from page to page. Where a rule genuinely varies by region, it is marked as varying rather than settled. If your table plays something differently, that is worth knowing: get in touch and it will be recorded here alongside the rest.

Two things that get stated wrongly

Beyond genuine regional variation, two claims are worth correcting. Goon Court and Bavan (also written bavney or baunie) are not two different results of increasing size; they are one result under several names, and what defines it is that the other side called the trump, not that the win was especially large. And the trump caller does not simply keep calling until they lose: the call follows the result of the hand, and after a Court it moves across to your own partner rather than staying where it was.

Also known as Court Piece · Coat Pees · Hukum · حکم · Rung · رنگ · Troeff Call · Trump