The goal of the game
Sweep is a capturing game, not a trick-taking one. Each turn you try to claim cards from the table by matching their value with a card from your hand. Points come from which cards you capture, not how many tricks you win — and the first team to 100 points across as many deals as it takes wins the match.
What you need
- Four players in two fixed partnerships — or two players, one against one.
- One standard 52-card deck (no jokers).
- A running score across deals, up to 100 points.
Teams and seating
Partners sit across the table from one another, exactly as in Delha Pakkad. If the seats are numbered 1–4 clockwise, 1 & 3 are partners and 2 & 4 are partners.
Playing one against one
Sweep plays well with just two. Each player is a side of one, so everything else — card values, houses, cementing, scoring, sweeps and the match lengths — works exactly as described on this page. Only the dealing differs.
Four cards go on the floor and each player is dealt four. The opening bid is made on those, with each of the two players getting one turn at it, and then each is dealt eight more: twelve apiece, as in a four-player deal. Two hands are only half of a pack, though, so when both players have played their twelve, twelve more each are dealt from the cards still held back. The floor and any houses stay exactly as they are, and the player who did not play last leads the new batch. Each player plays twenty-four cards over the deal, and it is still worth exactly 100 points.
A sweep made with the last card of the first twelve counts — the deal is not over, and the other player now faces an empty floor. Only a sweep with the deal’s very last card does not. On Taash, choose 1 v 1 under Players before you start and a bot takes the other seat.
The deal
Each deal uses the whole pack. Four cards go face-up on the table — the floor — and every player is dealt four. The opening bid is made on those four cards; as soon as it is settled, everyone is dealt eight more, so each player ends up with twelve. There is no refilling and no trump suit: a card’s value only ever decides what it can capture or build.
The opening bid
The deal opens on a bid. The player to the dealer’s right looks at their four cards and the floor, and must build a house worth 9, 10, 11, 12 or 13 — one card from hand combined with floor cards totalling that value — while holding a second card of the same value to claim it with later. A house nobody can claim would simply be a pile handed to the table, so that second card is part of what makes the bid legal.
A player who cannot manage it throws a card face-up onto the floor and the chance passes to the next seat, who now has more to work with. If all four pass, the deal simply begins with eight loose cards on the floor and no house open. Either way, the moment the bid is settled the other eight cards each are dealt and play carries on. The opening round is the deal’s first rotation, not a separate phase: everyone still plays twelve cards over twelve rotations.
Card values
Every card has a plain capture value from Ace to King, with no suit ranking above another:
A=1, 2=2, 3=3, 4=4, 5=5, 6=6, 7=7, 8=8, 9=9, 10=10, J=11, Q=12, K=13
Your turn
On your turn, play exactly one card from your hand:
- Capture. If loose cards on the floor, or a house, match your played card’s value, you may claim them. A 7 can capture a lone 7, or a 4 and a 3 together. You take the groups you name and anything else matching stays where it is.
- Build a house. Combine your card with floor cards to make a pile worth 9 to 13, while holding a second card of that value to claim it with later.
- Cement a house. Add another contribution worth the same value to a house that already stands.
- Break a house. Raise somebody else’s uncemented house to a new value between 9 and 13, and it becomes yours.
- Throw a card. Lay your card face-up on the floor as a loose card.
Which of these you play is entirely up to you. Nothing is forced: you may throw a card even with a capture or a house on offer — leaving a matching capture on the floor as bait is a fair play.
Houses, and cementing them
A house (ghar) is a pile held at a value from 9 to 13, and only a card of that value can capture it. Building a new one needs floor cards under it: a lone card set down as a house would be untouchable, because a loose nine can be swept up inside any bigger sum while a house of nine only ever falls to a nine.
Adding a second contribution worth the same value cements the house (a pakka house, in Hindi) — its value is locked, and nobody can break it again. Until then it is uncemented (kacha): any player except its owner can break it — add a card and raise it to a new value between 9 and 13 — taking the pile over along with the obligation to hold something that claims it. Cementing is what protects a house from exactly that.
How scoring works
After twelve rotations (twenty-four with two players) every hand is empty, and any loose cards still on the floor go to the team that captured most recently. Then each team’s pile is scored:
- Every spade is worth its own value: the ace 1, up to the king 13.
- Every ace that is not a spade is worth 1.
- The 10 of diamonds is worth 6.
- Every other card is worth nothing.
That is exactly 100 points on the table every deal, which is why the match is not kept by adding both totals up. The team that wins a deal banks the difference between the two scores and the losing team banks nothing at all; a deal split evenly moves neither. The first team to 100 takes the Baazi.
That full Baazi can run for several deals, so on Taash you choose the match length before you start: Quick is a single deal, won by the higher total (cards and sweeps together); Short banks the difference to 50; and Full is the traditional race to 100. Quick is the default.
A capture that clears the floor completely — every loose card and every house gone — is a sweep, worth 50. Clearing it with the very last card of a deal does not count, since whatever was there was coming to you regardless.
A quick worked example
The floor holds a loose 3 and a loose 4. You play a 7 and claim both. What that is worth depends entirely on which cards they are: the three and four of spades are seven points, the same two cards in hearts are nothing at all. Later, an opponent holding a second jack could instead have laid a 4 on the floor’s 7 to open a house of eleven — and you could have taken it from them with a card that raised it to twelve, right up until they cemented it.
Once the mechanics click, the depth is in the decisions — what to commit to a house, and when to lock it. Head to the Sweep strategy guide next.