The game
What is Court Piece?
A four-player partnership card game with one trump suit, thirteen tricks and no bidding at all. Here is where it comes from, how it differs from Spades, Hokm and Call Break, and why it has survived every card game fashion since.
Updated October 2026
Court Piece is a trick-taking card game for four players in two fixed partnerships, played with a standard 52-card deck. One player names a trump suit after seeing only five cards, thirteen tricks are then fought over, and the first partnership to seven of them wins the hand.
It is one of the most played card games in Pakistan, popular across north and west India, and carried everywhere the South Asian diaspora went — the Gulf, the UK, Canada, Australia. If you grew up in a Pakistani household, you have almost certainly watched four relatives argue over a hand of it.
What family of games does it belong to?
Court Piece sits in the Whist family: plain-trick games where a trump suit beats everything, you must follow the suit that was led, and the side that wins the most tricks wins. Whist itself, Spades, Hearts, Call Break, Hokm and Tarneeb are all relatives.
What distinguishes Court Piece inside that family is the trump call. There is no auction and no contract. One player — the hakam — sees five cards and simply names a suit, and the rest of the deal follows. It is the fastest trump mechanism in the whole family, and it means the caller is always gambling slightly.
How a hand plays out
- Four players, partners opposite. Deal five cards each, starting to the dealer’s right.
- The player to the dealer’s right names the trump suit — the rung.
- The rest of the deck is dealt in packets of four until everyone holds thirteen.
- The caller leads. Follow suit if you hold it; highest card of the led suit wins, unless somebody out of that suit plays a trump, and then the highest trump takes it.
- First partnership to seven tricks wins the hand. All thirteen is a kot, worth double.
The full rules guide walks through each stage properly, including what to call with a weak five and how the kot continuation rule works.
Why it has so many names
“Court Piece” is the English name, and it almost certainly comes from court — the unit a won hand is scored in. Spoken quickly it becomes coat piece or coat pees, which is how most people write it when they are searching for it. In Urdu and Punjabi the game is usually just rung or rang, after the trump suit itself.
There is a whole page on the names, because the spelling you grew up with is probably not the one the app store uses.
Court Piece compared with its cousins
| Game | Trump chosen by | Scoring | Players |
|---|---|---|---|
| Court Piece | One player, after 5 cards, no bidding | Hands won (courts); 13 tricks is a kot | 4, in partnerships |
| Hokm | One player, after 5 cards | Hands won, often to 7 points | 4, in partnerships |
| Call Break | Spades, always trump | Each player bids their own tricks | 4, individually |
| Spades | Spades, always trump | Partnership bids a trick total | 4, in partnerships |
| Tarneeb | Auction between players | Contract made or broken | 4, in partnerships |
The practical difference: Court Piece has no bidding to learn. You can teach it to someone in five minutes, which is exactly why it travels so well.
Why it holds up
- No luck in the long run. The deal is random, but thirteen tricks give skill plenty of room, and a partnership that reads cards well will beat one that does not.
- Silent teamwork. You cannot tell your partner anything. Everything they know, they inferred from your choices. Few games make cooperation feel this earned.
- Short hands. A hand is minutes. A match is one cup of tea.
- It survives house rules. Double Sir, Band Hukam, redeals — the game absorbs variants without breaking. All of them here.
Where to play Court Piece online
Most Court Piece apps are single-player games with online branding: bots, a leaderboard, and a lobby that never fills. RUNG is built the other way round — a real-time server that deals to four connected players, with bots only as a fallback when there genuinely is nobody to match you with.
It is free, runs on Android with a browser version in testing, needs no sign-up, and has no real-money gambling of any kind. Ranked matches move a rating from Bronze through to Master; private rooms let you play with your own group under your own house rules.
Play it, rather than read about it
Quick Play finds three real opponents in seconds. Free, no sign-up, no real-money gambling.