How to play Batak

The rules exactly as High Card Club plays them.

Batak is a Turkish trick-taking game for four players. There are no partners: everyone plays for themselves and keeps their own score. One player promises to take a number of tricks, names the trump suit, and then has to deliver. A trick is one round of four cards, one from each player; the best card wins it.

The deal

A full 52-card deck is used, ace high. Every player gets 13 cards, so there are 13 tricks in a hand. The deal moves one seat to the left after every hand, and the player to the dealer's left always speaks first.

The bidding

Starting to the dealer's left, each player in turn either bids or passes. The lowest bid is 5 and the highest is 13; every new bid has to be higher than the one before it. A pass is final: once you pass you are out of the bidding and will not be asked again. The bidding ends when everyone else has passed, or the moment somebody bids 13.

If all four players pass, the cards are not dealt again. The player to the dealer's left is left with a forced contract of 4 tricks. That is on purpose: passing has to stay cheaper than bidding 5, but never free.

Choosing the trump

The player who won the bidding picks one of the four suits as trump. Trump beats any card of any other suit. There is no no-trump contract in Batak. The same player leads the first trick.

Playing a trick

The lead card sets the suit. Going clockwise, each player adds one card, and the winner leads the next trick. The table enforces these duties, and tells you which one you broke if you tap a card it will not take:

• Follow the suit that was led if you hold it.
• Beat the winning card when you follow suit and the trick is still being won by a card of that suit. If you cannot go higher, any card of the suit is fine.
• If somebody has already trumped the trick, any card of the led suit will do.
• Trump when you are void: out of the led suit and holding a trump, you must play it. If a trump is already winning, you must play a higher one when you can.
• Out of the suit and out of trumps, play anything.
• Trump may not be led until a trump has been played on some trick, unless trumps are all you have left.

Scoring a hand

Each hand is scored the moment the thirteenth trick is collected.

• The bidder who takes at least as many tricks as promised scores one point per trick actually taken, not per trick bid. Take 9 on a bid of 7 and you score 9.
• A bidder who falls short loses the bid: a failed 7 is -7.
• A bid of 13 counts double both ways: +26 if all thirteen tricks come in, -26 if one is lost.
• Everyone else scores one point per trick they took.
• A player who takes no trick at all loses the bid amount. The bigger the contract, the more a single trick is worth defending: against a bid of 9, an empty hand costs 9.

How the match ends

The table owner chooses before the first deal. Either the match runs to a target score - 21, 35 or 51 points, with 51 as the default - and the first player to reach it at the end of a hand wins, or it runs a fixed number of hands: 5, 9 or 11, five by default. Players level at the top share the win. A safety cap stops any match after 99 hands.

House rules

Batak has none. Every Batak table plays the same way: trump must be broken before it can be led, and an all-pass round leaves 4 on the first speaker. The only table settings are the target, the number of hands and the tempo.

At the table

Your seat has a clock that runs around your avatar. At relaxed tempo you get 60 seconds per card and 75 to bid, at normal 30 and 40, at fast 15 and 25. Run out of time and the table plays a legal move for you; do that three turns in a row and it keeps playing your seat until you press Take over or play a card yourself. A lost connection holds your seat 60 seconds, or 10 if Discord tells us you closed the game. Leaving a match on purpose gives your seat to a bot for good.

The other games

Back to how to play, or read the rules for Spades, Tarneeb and Baloot.