How to Play Dehla Pakad
Description
An Indian partnership game with one obsessive goal: capture all four Tens. Everything else is a distraction.
Objective
Team up with the player across from you and capture as many Tens as possible — collect all four for an outright win.
Setup
Four players in fixed partnerships, using a standard 52-card deck.
Deal five cards to each player first. Trump is decided by whoever can't follow suit during this opening stretch — whatever suit they play instead becomes trump for the hand. Then the rest of the deck is dealt out, eight more cards each.
Rules
Follow suit if you can; if you can't, play anything, including trump.
Highest trump wins the trick — if no trump was played, highest card of the suit led wins.
Here's the twist: winning a trick alone doesn't capture it. You only collect the cards from the table once you (or your partner) win two tricks in a row — then both tricks are gathered together.
Whoever wins a trick leads the next one.
Winning
Collecting all four Tens between you and your partner wins the hand outright — a "Kot."
If nobody collects all four, whichever team captured more Tens wins the hand instead.
Winning seven hands in a row is also worth a Kot on its own.
Play to an agreed number of Kots, or an agreed time limit, to decide the match.