(Public Domain)
This game, which is very popular in India and Pakistan, has several names. The name Court Piece is sometimes written as Coat Piece or Coat Pees, Pees being a Hindi word meaning to deal. In Pakistan this game is often known as Rang, which means trump. In some places, for example in Goa, it is called Seven Hands: in India the English word "hand" is sometimes used to mean a trick - i.e. a set of cards, one played by each player in turn.
Players and Cards
There are four players in fixed partnerships, partners sitting opposite. Deal and play are anticlockwise.
The dealer deals a batch of five cards to each player. The trump-caller player looks at his or her five cards and chooses and announces the trump suit. Then the dealer deals out all the remaining cards in batches of four, so that everyone has 13 cards.
Winning
The object of the game is to score courts by winning the majority of the tricks. The team that wins at least seven of the thirteen tricks (hands) wins the deal, and a team that wins seven deals in succession scores a court.It is also possible to score a court in a single deal by winning the first seven tricks, while the opposing team scores none. The overall winners of the session are the team that has scored most courts after an agreed length of time.
Variations
Some play that the card indicating the trump suit is kept face down, so that the players other than the trump caller do not know what the trump suit will be.
Some play that the trump indicator card is selected at random from the first player's first five cards without looking, so that even this player does not know what the trump suit will be until the card is revealed.
Double Sir
Double Sir or Double Sar is a variant of Court Piece: the word sir (sar) means trick (hand). An online implementation of this variation can be found here: http://runng.com
The deal, choice of trumps and rules of play are the same as in Court Piece, but in this variant, a player who wins a trick does not gather in the cards, but turns the cards of the trick face down in the centre of the table. Cards are only gathered in when the same player wins two consecutive tricks. Until then the tricks pile up in centre.
When a player does win two consecutive tricks, that player takes all the cards from the centre (the trick just won and the pile of previous tricks), adds them to his team's face down trick pile, and leads to the next trick. Scoring is then similar to Court Piece.
Variants of Double Sir: Be-ranga Double Sar
In this variant the dealer deals all thirteen cards and the play begins without trumps until some player is unable to follow suit. As soon as a player cannot follow suit, the suit of the card they play instead becomes trump for the rest of the deal. No tricks can be collected until the trick after the one in which trumps are determined.
