How to play Ganjifa

Which Ganjifa this is

Ganjifa cards are the round, painted playing cards of India, popular there since the 16th century, and Ganjifa is also the name of the trick game played with them. The books disagree on the rules, so here is the game this table plays: the individual trick game for exactly three seats, on the 96-card, eight-suit Mughal Ganjifa pack. The ten-suit Dashavatara pack, with a suit for each avatar of Vishnu, is a later Hindu version and is not dealt here. The history, the art and the museum sets, from Sawantwadi in Maharashtra to Mysore and Odisha, are on the menu page.

How to play Ganjifa online, and is there a PDF?

On the computer table you sit with computer 1 and computer 2. With friends, you open a room for exactly three people, choose 3 deals or 6, and send each friend a link; a room has no computer seats. There is no Ganjifa PDF to download or print: the rules are on this page, and the staged deal plays itself when you press play.

The pack and the two orders

Ninety-six round cards: eight suits of twelve, each with a Mir (the king), a Wazir (the minister) and the numbers one to ten. The suits are Taj, Safed, Shamsher, Ghulam, Chang, Surkh, Barat and Qimash. There are no trumps, and suits are never compared with each other.

Half the suits run one way and half the other. In Taj, Safed, Shamsher and Ghulam the order is Mir, Wazir, then ten down to one. In Chang, Surkh, Barat and Qimash it is Mir, Wazir, then one up to ten. That is why the board says ten high or one high on every suit: in a one-high suit the number alone lies, because the one is the third-best card. John McLeod’s card game rules site notes that the same two-way order turns up in early European trick games such as Tarot, Hombre and Maw.

The deal and the opening

All 96 cards are dealt in batches of four, 32 to each seat, starting with the seat after the dealer. The first batch and the last batch you are dealt go face up, so eight cards of every hand are open to everyone until they are played. If a hand holds no Mir the deal is void and the same dealer deals again.

Day or night decides who opens, and the table alternates them, day for the first deal. By day the Mir of Surkh opens, by night the Mir of Safed, and the board shows which it is. The seat holding that king plays it with any other card, each other seat puts down any two cards, and the opener takes all six and leads. Nobody can beat that first trick.

The hukm, and what wins a trick

A suit’s hukm is the highest card still unplayed in it, and it is the only card that can win a trick in that suit. You do not have to follow suit: when you cannot win, you put down any card you like. A played card is gone, so the hukm changes as the cards go. Once the Mir and the Wazir of Taj are out, the ten of Taj is the hukm.

The table plays a hukm for you whenever its suit is led or called, so you cannot forget one. What you can still get wrong is what to lead and what to throw, and that depends on knowing which top cards are still out. The board keeps a tracker of every suit for that.

What you must lead

Every lead follows a ladder, and the board offers only the rungs the rules allow, dims the rest and says why. The first rung is a run. If you hold the top two or more cards of a suit in a row, that is a dukkal, and you must lead all of the run except its lowest card. Hold the Mir and the Wazir of Taj, with the ten of Taj in another hand, and you lead the Mir and keep the Wazir. Hold the ten as well and the run is three, so you lead the Mir and the Wazir and keep the ten. Each other seat plays the same number of cards as you led, any cards, you win them all and lead again. With two runs you choose which.

The second rung is a deni. You hold a suit’s Wazir, its Mir is unplayed and in another hand, and you hold a low card of that suit: you must give that low card as a call. Say you hold the Wazir and the 5 of Chang and someone else holds the Mir of Chang. You lead the 5, the Mir’s holder has to play the Mir, a third seat plays any one card, and the Mir’s holder wins all three and leads. It costs you the trick, but the Mir is gone, so your Wazir is now the top Chang. If you hold that Wazir with no other card of its suit, you can give the Wazir itself as the call and the Mir’s holder takes it, or you keep it and it burns: a burnt card counts as the lowest of its suit from then on.

The third rung is your choice. A talafa is the deni’s cousin: a call in any other suit where you hold the second-best card and another seat holds the top one, made with a low card of that suit, and the top card’s holder wins and leads just the same. An utari plays your hukm cards, all of them at once in the first phase, one from each suit, and every other seat plays as many cards as you led, any cards. You win the lot and lead again.

If you hold no hukm, no run and no deni, you may give up the lead instead of calling, blind. Your hand is shuffled face down, the next seat picks one of the backs, and that card is led as a call in its suit. Whoever holds that suit’s hukm has to play it, wins the cards and leads. The cure is to hold a hukm.

Losing the lead, and the second phase

After every trick, if the winner is not the seat that led, the leader has lost the lead, and the board marks it with a dot. Once all three seats have held the lead and lost it, the second phase begins and the rules loosen. An utari may play any number of your hukm cards, one at a time if you like. A talafa may be a card of another suit, played face down while you name the suit you are after. Nobody else sees that card, the trick’s winner included, and no other seat’s tracker strikes it out.

Scoring, and how a match ends

A deal ends when the hands are empty. Every trick wins its cards, and all 96 are won. Your share is 32, so a deal scores the cards you won minus 32: over a third of the pack is a plus, under it a minus, and the three scores add up to zero. A match is 3 deals, so every seat deals once, or 6 when the host picks it. The highest total wins, and a tie at the top is a shared win. Real Ganjifa can be played for stakes; ours is played for the score.

Where we play it differently from the books

These are choices, because the sources disagree. After a deni the seat holding the top card wins and leads, as in Michael Dummett’s 1982 account; John McLeod’s has the caller keep the lead. The second phase starts when all three seats have lost the lead, not at the last twelve cards. The table plays a hukm for you, so the penalties for forgetting one never come up. The next seat alone picks the card in a blind lead, because two people online cannot confer. You give up the lead by the pick and never by playing a low card.

We left out the swap of a card in the first trick, the optional calls such as the double deni, the physical paying of cards between deals, and four and six seats. The accounts disagree on when a match ends, at four rounds in one and with no set number in another; ours stops after the deals you chose.