You may heard of this game as Trump, T'rup Chaal, Raang, Court piece, Kot Pees, Troefcall.
The objective of the game is to win 7 hands before the other team does.
First, we'll explain the rules as simply as possible.
At the end, we offer some tips on strategy.
First, you'll get to call trump based on the first five cards you are dealt.
Trump is the card suit (Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs, or Spades) that will be
more "powerful" than all the other suits.
You can pick any suit you want.
On the first round, the trump-caller gets to play a card first. Play proceeds counter clock-wise until each player has played one card. After that, the player who won the round plays first on the next round.
If you're the first person to play in a round, you can play any card
from any suit you want. After the first player has played, the suit of
the card that is played is on boards. Meaning, you have to play
a card from that suit if you can.
If you don't have cards in the suit that is on board, you can either
cut with trump- play a card from the suit that is trump, or
walk-aside - play a card from any other suit.
An Ace of Hearts beats a King of Hearts. A King of Hearts beats a
Queen of Hearts. A Queen of Hearts beats a Jack of Hearts. And
so forth.
But if trump is Diamonds, the 2 of Diamonds beats all Hearts,
Spades, or Clubs.
When a card from the trump suit is compared to another card from
that suit, the higher value wins.
Your partner sits directly across from you (you may recognize
Mat from the Hot Peppa Sauce comics). At the end of a
round, if you or Mat played the highest card, your team claims
the hand. You need to win 7 hands before the other
team does.
Once a team wins 7 hands, the game is over.
Some people call trump based on seeing two or more of a certain suit
in their hand. Others pick based on having a couple of picture cards-
(Ace, King, Queen, Jack ).
Sometimes when women play with their significant others, they call
Diamonds to drop a hint. You don’t even have to have the card suit
in your first five cards to call that suit trump.
We don't recommend you pick based on the last two options, but
we won't make fun of you if you do.
When you're the first person to play a card in a round, you
can play any card, even a card from the trump suit. Usually,
players try to save trump cards for cutting. Sometimes,
it's an effective strategy to try and force other players to
play out their trump cards in the beginning of a game.
We'll let you figure out when that's a good idea.
Let's say trump is Clubs, and Mat played the 3 of Diamonds. Then
Bhaggie (the player to your left) plays a 4 of Diamonds. If you don’t
have any more Diamonds in your hand, you should consider playing a Club
because it’s a trump card, and beats the suit on board.
Usually it's a good idea to play a low trump card when you cut, so that
you don't waste your higher cards when you need to play a round that starts
with trump.
However, in this scenario if you play the 4 of Clubs, and Bushhead
(the last player to play) plays the 5 of Clubs, because he was also
out of Diamonds, he would win the hand.
And if this happens, you'll be so disappointed.
Consider this scenario. Bushhead (the kid to your right) plays a 4 of
Hearts and Spades is trump. Then Mat (your partner) plays a King of
Hearts. Then Bhaggie (the girl to your left) plays the 5 of Hearts.
Next it's your turn to play.
Your partner, Mat has the highest card on board, and is winning.
If you have Hearts, you shouldn't play higher than him. If you don't
have Hearts, you're better off walking aside, rather than cutting with
trump.
Sometimes, you won't have a choice, but when you do, try to
let your partner win.
When there's a suit on board, and you don't have cards in that suit
you can cut with trump, or walk-aside. When you walk-aside, it's
best you chose a low card from another suit.
No reason to get rid of high cards like Aces, Kings, and Queens
when they can be used in the next round.
Also, when you walk-aside you may want to consider playing the
last card you have in a suit. That way, when that suit is played next
you have the option to cut with trump.
Normally, after a game is played, if the trump-caller was not on the team
that won, the trump-caller moves counter-clockwise. For now, we're letting the user
call all the time.
We hope to make a number of advancements in game play, including better mobile
support and multi-player capability.