1. The deal
Each player receives 13 cards, face down. Two cards are placed face down in the closed deck, and one card is turned face up to start the open deck. The face-up card is the open joker for the rest of the hand, unless it is a printed joker, in which case the next card is turned up.
The player to the dealer's left draws first, then play proceeds clockwise. You may draw from the closed deck (without showing the card) or take the top of the open deck (visible to all).
2. Sorting the 13
The moment your 13 cards are in your hand, group them by suit and by face value. The first 20 seconds of sorting save 20 minutes of confusion in the rest of the hand.
- Spades, hearts, clubs, diamonds. Keep suits separated.
- Number order: 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, J, Q, K, A, 2.
- Jokers and printed jokers are pulled to one side as a "wild" pile.
3. The first priority: one pure sequence
Your hand does not exist as a valid declaration until you have at least one pure sequence, which is three or more cards in the same suit, in order, with no joker. The Ace can be high (Q-K-A) or low (A-2-3), but cannot wrap (K-A-2 is not a valid sequence).
Everything else is secondary. A second sequence (pure or impure), a set, and a clean discard plan all come after that first pure sequence is locked in.
4. The open joker
The face-up card is the wild joker for the hand. It can replace any card in an impure sequence (a sequence with a joker in it) and any card in a set (three or four of a kind with the same face value). It cannot be used in a pure sequence.
The open joker is the most contested card on the table. Note who picked it and when they discarded. A player who took the joker and then discarded a high card of the same suit is signalling; a player who took the joker and then went quiet has probably built an impure run.
5. When to drop
The drop rule is a tool. Most platforms let you drop after your first turn (a "first drop", usually 2 points on a 2-rupee table) or in the middle of the hand (a "middle drop", usually half the entry). A full-count loss costs the total of your ungrouped cards.
If, after three turns, you do not have at least one pure sequence within reach, the drop is usually cheaper than the full-count loss. The drop is also the right move if the table has been drawing aggressively from the closed deck; cards you needed are gone.
6. Declaring
To declare, you must have a valid hand: one pure sequence, one second sequence (pure or impure), and a third grouping (a sequence, a set, or both). All 13 cards must be grouped; any ungrouped card at declaration is an invalid show.
You declare by laying your 13 cards face up on the table and discarding your final card to the finish slot. The other players then have a chance to challenge, which is a separate move that confirms or denies a specific grouping.
7. The scoresheet
At the end of the hand, every losing player ungrouped cards are counted at face value, with face cards at 10, Ace at 10, and the printed jokers at 0. A player with a valid declaration scores zero. A player who lost with a full-count of 67 pays 67 rupees at a 1-rupee table, 134 at a 2-rupee table.
The scoresheet is the only way to confirm what you actually won or lost. Read it at the end of every hand, especially when the result surprises you.
8. Reading the table during the hand
The second read of a 13-card hand is the read of the table. Track four signals in order of cost: which player picked the printed joker, which player has been silent for two turns, which player keeps taking from the closed deck, and which player keeps discarding high cards of one suit.
A silent player for two turns after picking the printed joker has almost certainly built an impure sequence around it. A player taking from the closed deck three times in a row is digging for a specific card; if you hold that card, expect them to wait for the open deck or to drop. A player discarding the same suit high-cards one after another is clearing space for a long run and would rather the suit disappear than be left stranded.
The table read is not a guarantee. It is a probability read with a thin margin. Players bluff by going quiet when they have nothing, and players bluff by drawing from the closed deck to look busy. Use the second read as a tiebreaker, never as a primary signal.
9. What the turn timer actually measures
Most platforms run a 30-second turn timer. The timer is not a count of how long the format recommends you to think; it is a count of how long the platform will wait before auto-discarding your oldest card. The auto-discard rule was added to keep tables from stalling when one player walks away.
If you find yourself timing out often, slow the table down by sorting your hand before the timer starts. Most timers reset the moment you pick from either deck, so the sort happens during the pick animation, not during your think time. The platform is not measuring how fast you think; it is measuring how fast the hand moves.
For your first three sessions, set the table stakes low enough that a timed-out auto-discard costs less than a rupee. The math of the timer is the same at every stake, but the cost of a misread is not.
