Court Piece (Rang)
Court Piece (one of many names it is known by in India) or Rang (as it is known in Pakistan), is a trick-taking game for four players in partnerships. Court Piece features an unusually tough requirement for scoring points, called courts. A partnership has to collect more tricks than their opponents for seven hands in a row to score! This is not quite as difficult as it seems, though—when a team wins a hand, they have the advantage of choosing the trump suit on the next hand. This makes it more likely that a partnership will be able to rack up a streak of wins.
Object of Court Piece
The object of Court Piece is to score more courts than your opponents. Courts are primarily scored in two ways:
- By taking seven or more tricks on seven consecutive hands.
- By taking the first seven tricks on one hand.
Setup
Court Piece uses a standard 52-card deck of playing cards. As per usual, we suggest using Denexa 100% Plastic Playing Cards for your game. You’ll also want something like a piece of scratch paper for recording the score and the number of hands each team has won.
Partnerships can be determined by some random method, or simply deciding who wants to be partners with who. Players should sit between their opponents, with their partner across from them. Thus, as the turn proceeds around the table, it will alternate between players. The first dealer should also be determined, randomly.
Shuffle and deal five cards to each player. The player to the dealer’s left examines their cards and, without consulting with their partner, chooses a suit to be trump. Then, deal the rest of the deck out, so that all players have thirteen cards.
Game play
Game play begins with the player to the dealer’s left leading to the first trick. Each player in turn plays one card to the trick. If a player has a card of the suit led, they must play it; otherwise, they may play any card, including a trump. When all four players have contributed a card to the trick, whoever played the highest trump wins the trick. If nobody played a trump, the highest card of the suit led wins the trick.
Captured tricks are removed from the table and neatly stacked in front of one of the partners of the side that took the trick. (Both partners share a won-trick pile.) Tricks should be kept separate, such as by placing them at right angles, so the number of tricks taken can clearly be discerned. When a player wins a trick, they then lead to the next one.
Revokes
Court Piece has special procedures for handling a revoke (i.e. when a player fails to follow suit). If a player revokes, but realizes their mistake before the trick has been played out, they may call attention to it and play an appropriate card instead. Everyone that played after the revoking player may then change the card they played. The trick is awarded, and play continues as usual.
If it is discovered over the course of the hand that a player revoked on a previous trick, the revoking partnership forfeits the hand, which ends immediately. The opponents score a court. If the dealer’s side revoked, the previous dealer’s partner deals the next hand; if the dealer’s opponents revoked, the deal passes to the left.
Scoring courts
Aside from a revoke, the first opportunity to score a court occurs after the seventh trick has been played. If one side has captured all of the first seven tricks, they score a court. Customarily, the hand is abandoned at this point, and the next hand is dealt. If the winners choose to, however, they may play on with the hope of collecting all thirteen tricks. This feat is very rarely achieved, but if it is, it scores 52 courts for the side that did it! There is no penalty for trying and failing to capture all of the tricks.
If the two teams split the first seven tricks between them, the hand is played out, ending after all thirteen tricks have been played. Each partnership counts up the number of tricks they took and compares them. Whichever side took more tricks wins the hand.
A running tally of how many consecutive hands the presently-dominant side has won is kept on the score sheet. If the same team that won the first hand also wins the second, the count increases from one to two, and if they win again it increases to three, and so on. If their opponents manage to break the streak by winning a hand themselves, however, the counter resets, with that side starting over with a tally of one.
Should a team reach a streak of seven consecutive hands won, they score a court. The counter is then reset to zero.
Passing the deal
After a hand ends, one player on the losing team deals the next hand. This grants the winning partnership the advantage of getting to declare trumps on the upcoming hand. If the outgoing dealer’s team won the hand, the deal simply passes to the left. If the dealer’s team lost the hand but the opponents did not score a court, the same player deals again. When a court is scored, the deal passes to the outgoing dealer’s partner.
Play continues for a predetermined length of time. Whichever side has the most courts at that time wins the game. If neither team has scored any courts, or both teams are tied, the result is a draw.
Pluck
Pluck is a three-player trick-taking game. In Pluck, each player has a trick quota on every hand that they must meet. If they fail to make the quota, they pay the price on the next hand—the players that took enough tricks get to steal from them!
Object of Pluck
The object of Pluck is to capture tricks in excess of a quota set by the player’s position relative to the dealer. Doing so both scores a player points and allows them to exchange for better cards on subsequent hands.
Setup
To play Pluck, you’ll need a special 51-card pack. To make such a pack, start with a deck of Denexa 100% Plastic Playing Cards. Remove all of the 2s except the 2♣, then add in the two jokers. You’ll be left with a deck with aces through 3s in each of the four suits, two jokers, and the 2♣. You’ll also probably want something to keep score with, like pencil and paper.
The two jokers used in Pluck must be different in some way, because one will be designated the “big joker” and the other as the “little joker”. As you might guess from the names, the big joker outranks the little joker. (If you’re using Denexa cards, the red joker, with the dragon, lends itself to being the big joker; the black joker, with the jester, then becomes the little joker.) Be sure that it’s communicated to all of the players which joker is which.
Shuffle and deal out the entire deck. Each player will receive seventeen cards.
Game play
The cards rank in their usual order, with aces high. The big joker is considered to be the highest trump, followed by the little joker as second-highest trump, then the ace of trump, and so on.
The quotas
Each player has their own quota of tricks that they are required to capture on each hand.
- The dealer: seven tricks
- Player to left of dealer: six tricks
- Player to right of dealer: four tricks
Note that the three quotas add up to exactly seventeen tricks, the total number of tricks in the game. This means that if anyone exceeds their quota at all, by even one trick, another player will be short.
Play of the hand
Upon looking at their hand, the dealer declares the trump suit. Whoever holds the 2♣ leads it to the first trick. The next player to their left responds by playing a club, if they are able; otherwise, they may play any card they wish. The final player follows in turn. These three cards played to the table are called a trick. After all players have played a card, the player who played the highest trump, or the highest club if none were played, wins the trick. They collect the three cards and place them into a score pile, separate from their hand.
The player that won the first trick then leads any card, except for a trump (see below); again, all players must follow the suit led, if able. After all three cards have been played, whoever played the highest card of the suit led collects the cards and gets to start the next trick, and the process repeats. Players should keep the tricks separate in their score piles; one good way of doing this is to place each newly-captured trick at right angles to the preceding one.
The first time a player who is unable to follow suit plays a trump, trumps are said to have been broken. Trumps can then be led to subsequent tricks. When clubs are trump, trumps are broken even for the first trick, because, of course, the first trick always contains at least one club.
Scoring
After all seventeen tricks have been played, the hand is scored. Each player counts the number of tricks that they have. A player scores one point for each trick that they collected in excess of their quota. If a player captured tricks less than or equal to their quota, they score nothing for that hand.
After the hand is scored, the player to the outgoing dealer’s left deals the next hand.
Plucks
Beginning with the second hand, and on every hand thereafter, players are entitled to plucks based on their score in the previous hand. A player earns one pluck for each extra trick they collected on the preceding hand. Players can be plucked from once for each trick they were short of their quota on the previous hand.
Plucking takes place immediately after the cards have been dealt, before the dealer announces the trump suit. The plucking player passes one card, face down, to the player they are plucking from. That player then passes back, also face down, the highest card they hold of suit of the card they just received. Because the trump suit is not yet known, the jokers cannot be passed during plucking.
Ending the game
Game play continues until one player reaches a score of 20 points or more. That player is the winner.
