How to Play Court Piece — The Full Rules

Court Piece — Rung, Coat Pees, Hukum, Troeff Call — is a 4-player trick-taking game played in fixed partnerships with a called trump. It 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 — and where a rule genuinely differs from one place to another, it says so instead of pretending there is one right answer.

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 — deciding who calls first

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. Four cards are dealt face up, one to each player, anti-clockwise, 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 player to the hakem’s right leads, and play continues anti-clockwise. 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 — the open-hand challenge, where a player shows their cards to the opponents and declares they will sweep the hand anyway.

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.

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 — both are used. From there the names simply follow the numbers, from nau and das: the ten is the dahla, the nine the nahla, the eight the aathi, the seven the saati, the six the chakki, the five the panji and the four the chauka. 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 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 — but if you learn one and sit down at the other, that is the argument you will have.

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 — 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