Callbreak

Callbreak is the trick-taking card game played across Nepal and North India, at family get-togethers, on long train rides and in college hostels. Four players each try to win exactly as many tricks as they promised. Here you sit at the bottom of the table against three computer players: Kabir, Priya and Arjun. A game is five rounds, and the highest total at the end wins.

The deal

A normal 52-card deck is dealt out, 13 cards each. Spades are always trumps. The dealer moves one seat to the right (anticlockwise) every round. If any hand has no spade at all, or no picture card or Ace, the cards are thrown in and dealt again, so nobody is stuck with a hopeless hand.

Bidding

Starting with the player after the dealer, everyone calls a bid from 1 to 8: the number of tricks they expect to win. Count your Aces, your high spades and any long run of spades. A short side suit helps too, because once it runs out you can trump it. The game marks a suggested bid, but the choice is yours.

The play rules

• The player after the dealer leads the first trick. Whoever wins a trick leads the next.
• You must follow the suit that was led if you can.
• When you follow, you must play a card that beats the highest card of that suit so far, if you have one. If someone has already trumped with a spade, any card of the suit will do.
• If you can’t follow suit, you must play a spade. If a spade is already on the trick, you must beat it if you can.
• Otherwise you may play anything. The highest spade wins the trick; with no spade, the highest card of the led suit wins.

Cards you can play rise up; the others are dimmed. Tap a dimmed card and the game tells you which rule stops it.

Scoring

Make your bid and you score the bid, plus 0.1 for every extra trick. Fall short and you lose the whole bid. For example, bid 4 and win 6 tricks: +4.2. Bid 4 and win 3: −4. The scorecard keeps every round, and totals are shown with one decimal place.

Tips

• Missing a bid costs far more than an extra trick earns, so bid what you are fairly sure of.
• Watch who stops following a suit: that player can trump it next time.
• Win with the cheapest card that does the job, and keep your top spades for when they count.
• Once your bid is safe, throw away high cards that could win tricks you don’t need.