Call Break

Call Break is the trick-taking game of Nepal and northern India, and if you know Spades you are most of the way there. Four players, thirteen cards each, spades always trump. Before the first card each seat calls the number of tricks it will take, from one to eight, and is scored against its own call at the end: make it and the call is your score, with a tenth of a point for every trick over; miss it and the call is taken away. There are no partners. Everybody plays for themselves.

The rule that makes it a different game is that you must try to win the trick whenever you can. Following suit is compulsory, as it is everywhere, but so is beating the highest card of the suit already on the table when you hold one that does, and a player with no card of the suit led must trump, and overtrump, if a spade in the hand would take the trick. A high card cannot be kept back for a better moment. That is why a Call Break hand is called on what it will be made to win as much as on what it can.

You call from a row of eight buttons, with the calls already made shown above them so you are never calling blind. Three computer opponents sit at the table at one of three strengths, or you open a table and send the code to three friends. The traditional match is five deals added together; here one deal is one game, and a rematch is the next deal. Your difficulty setting and your record stay in this browser.