How to play Panjpar
The rules of Panjpar, and a game played out one move at a time.
Panjpar is a two-player card game from Afghanistan, and we follow the rules on John McLeod's Pagat site. Each of you holds five cards, a trump card lies under the pile, and you take turns attacking and beating. Press play to watch one real deal, stopped along the way to say what happened and why.
Press play and we deal a short game of Panjpar on the real table. It stops on every move and says what just happened and what you could do next.
What does the name Panjpar mean?
Five cards. That is the size of each hand at the start, and the size you draw back up to after every battle while anything is left to draw.
The deal
Panjpar is a game for two players, with one standard 52-card deck, ace high. Before any card is dealt, one of you guesses the colour of the trump suit: red, meaning hearts or diamonds, or black, meaning clubs or spades. On our table the first guesser is picked at random and you swap with every new deal. Then it is five cards each, and the next card goes face up. Its suit is trump. The rest go face down on top of it.
Guess right and you attack first. Guess wrong and your opponent does.
Attacking
The attacker lays one, three or five cards face up, side by side. A single card can be anything. Three cards need a pair plus any third card, so three of a kind counts. Five need two separate pairs plus a fifth card: K-K-4-4-7 and 6-6-6-6-J work, and so does a full house. 8-8-8 with two different cards has only one pair, so it does not.
Check your opponent's hand size first. You cannot attack with more cards than they hold, so a hand of one or two can only be attacked with one card, and a hand of three or four with one or three.
Beating, or picking up
The defender may answer each attack card by playing one card of their own, or leave it and pick it up. A card is beaten by a higher card of the same suit, or by any trump if it is not a trump itself. A trump is beaten only by a higher trump. Beat all, some or none, even a card you could have beaten. A bit of strategy from Pagat: aces and big trumps are often better picked up for later.
Both the beaten cards and the cards that beat them go aside, face down. Anything left unbeaten joins the defender's hand. If every card was beaten, the defender attacks next. If not, the same attacker goes again.
A first battle. You attack with the eight of clubs. Your opponent has no higher club, or would rather not spend a trump, and picks it up. They now hold six cards. You hold four, so you draw one to get back to five, and because the card went unbeaten you attack again.
Drawing up
After each battle the attacker, then the defender, must draw from the pile until they hold five. Holding five or more, you draw nothing. The trump card is the last card drawn, and nobody can swap for it. After that, play continues without drawing, and you play out what is in your hand.
Winning a deal, and a match
Once the trump card has been drawn, the first of you to empty your hand wins the deal, and whoever still holds cards loses. If both of you empty in the same battle, it is a draw.
An example. The trump card has been drawn and you hold one card, the seven of hearts. Your opponent holds two, the nine of hearts and the four of clubs. You attack with the seven and the nine beats it. You have no cards and they still have one, so you win the deal. Give your opponent the nine alone and the same battle empties both hands: a draw.
Pagat defines one deal. The match is our addition: the host chooses first to 1, 3 or 5 deals won, with 3 as the default. A draw scores for nobody and the deal is played again.
What you can and cannot know
You may always see how many cards your opponent holds. You may not count the pile, so the table shows no number, and you cannot look through the set-aside cards. What your opponent picked up stays on the board for the last battle only, so keep the rest in your head.
How to play Panjpar online, no PDF needed
Once you have watched the deal, start your own. Open a table, pick the match length and share one link with whoever takes the second seat, or play the computer on the same rules. There is no account to make and no PDF to download: the rules are on this page.