How to Play 304

How to Play

A Sri Lankan and South Indian 4-player partnership trick-taking game played with a 32-card pack whose scoring points total exactly 304. Jacks and 9s outrank Aces in every suit, and the trump suit is chosen in secret and kept hidden for as long as play allows.

304 (pronounced 'three-oh-four') is a 4-player partnership trick-taking game overwhelmingly popular in Sri Lanka and widely played across coastal Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Maharashtra in India. It uses a 32-card pack, the 7 through Ace of each suit, with an unusual, uniform rank order that applies to every suit alike rather than only to trump: Jack, 9, Ace, 10, King, Queen, 8, 7 (high to low). Each rank also carries a fixed scoring value, and summed across all 4 suits those values total exactly 304, giving the game its name. After a bidding auction, the highest bidder secretly sets aside 1 card from their own hand as a face-down trump indicator, keeping the trump suit hidden from the defending partnership for as long as possible. This concealed-trump mechanic, rare among trick-taking games with an openly declared trump, adds a distinctive layer of bluffing on top of the already demanding bidding and card-counting skills the game rewards. Matches are scored with a shared bank of tokens exchanged between the 2 partnerships hand by hand, and the side that eventually claims every token wins the match.

Players

Exactly 4 players in 2 fixed partnerships, with partners seated opposite each other around the table. Deal and play both proceed counter-clockwise, the reverse of the direction used in most Western trick-taking games. A single hand takes roughly 10 to 15 minutes including bidding, while a full match to claim every token commonly runs 45 minutes to over an hour depending on how large a token bank the group agrees to start with.

Card Deck

304 uses 32 cards drawn from a standard 52-card pack: the 7, 8, 9, 10, Jack, Queen, King, and Ace of all 4 suits, with the 2s through 6s set aside and unused. Unusually for a trick-taking game, the same rank order applies in every suit, not only in trump: Jack, 9, Ace, 10, King, Queen, 8, 7 (high to low). Each rank also carries a fixed scoring value used only for tallying a partnership's captured points, separate from its trick-winning rank: Jack 30, 9 20, Ace 11, 10 10, King 3, Queen 2, 8 0, 7 0. Summed across all 4 suits, the pack holds exactly 304 points, the source of the game's name.

Objective

The partnership that wins the bidding auction, the trump-making side, must capture card points in tricks totaling at least their final bid; the defending partnership's objective is simply to hold them below it. Bids are always stated as a target number of points out of the pack's 304, with a minimum opening bid of 160, just over half the pack. Because Jacks and 9s are worth far more scoring points than Aces or 10s despite the 2 pairs of ranks sitting close together in trick-winning power, the objective rewards controlling those 2 specific ranks over simply winning the most individual tricks.

Setup

1. Seat the 4 players so that partners sit directly opposite each other, agree on partnerships, and choose an initial dealer.
2. Shuffle the 32-card pack and offer it to the dealer's left-hand opponent to cut.
3. Deal 4 cards face down to each player, one at a time, counter-clockwise, beginning with the dealer's right-hand neighbor.
4. If the dealer's right-hand neighbor holds fewer than 15 scoring points in that first 4-card packet, they may demand a redeal of the entire hand before bidding starts.
5. Hold the bidding auction on this first packet of 4 cards; see Bidding below.
6. Once bidding closes, the highest bidder looks at their 4 cards and sets 1 aside face down as the trump indicator, fixing the trump suit for the hand without revealing it to anyone else.
7. Deal the remaining cards in further batches of 4 to each player, counter-clockwise, until every player holds 8 cards total.

Bidding

1. The dealer's right-hand neighbor bids first, and bidding continues counter-clockwise from there.
2. Bids are point targets out of the pack's 304 points, always rounded to a multiple of 10, and the minimum opening bid is 160.
3. Each new bid must exceed the previous one. A player may instead pass; a player who passes sits out for the rest of that auction, though they may still ask their partner to keep bidding on their behalf.
4. Bidding ends the moment 3 players in a row have passed; the last, highest bid stands, and that bidder's partnership becomes the trump-making side for the hand.
5. If every player passes without a single bid being made, the hand is thrown in without play and redealt by the next dealer.

Gameplay

1. The dealer's right-hand neighbor leads to the first trick, whether or not they ended up winning the auction.
2. Players must follow the suit led whenever they hold a card of that suit.
3. A player with no card of the suit led may play any card, including a card of the hidden trump suit, to win the trick outright over every card of the suit that was led.
4. Because the trump suit is not yet public knowledge, a player who cannot follow suit conceals their played card by placing it face down instead of face up. This keeps opponents, and even the trump-maker's own partner, unable to tell whether a face-down card was the hidden trump used to win the trick or simply a low-value card of no consequence.
5. The trump indicator becomes fully public the moment any player actually needs to use a trump to win a trick, or sooner if the trump-maker chooses to reveal it early; once revealed, all remaining play in that hand continues with the trump suit openly known, exactly like any conventional trick-taking game.
6. The winner of each trick leads the next one. Keep won tricks as a single face-down pile per partnership rather than per player, since only each side's total captured points matter at the end of the hand.

Scoring

1. Card point values: Jack 30, 9 20, Ace 11, 10 10, King 3, Queen 2, 8 0, 7 0. Summed over all 4 suits, the full pack totals exactly 304 points.J♠9♠A♠10♠
2. At the end of the hand, each partnership adds up the scoring points on the cards in its own won tricks. The trump-making side succeeds if its total meets or exceeds its final bid; anything below counts as a failed bid.
3. Both partnerships start a match holding an agreed bank of tokens, commonly 11 each. A successful bid transfers tokens from the defenders to the trump-makers: 1 token for a bid under 200, 2 tokens for a bid of 200 to 240, and 3 tokens for a bid of 250 or higher. A failed bid transfers 1 extra token compared to a success at the same level, this time from the trump-makers to the defenders.
4. Because 304 is played across many consecutive hands rather than to a single target score, close matches often come down to which side accumulates the whole token bank first while steadily draining it away from the other.

Winning

A match ends the moment 1 partnership has collected every token in play, having steadily drawn the bank away from their opponents hand after hand; that side wins the match outright. Because most individual hands swing only 1 to 3 tokens, matches played with a large starting bank can run for many hands, rewarding partnerships who consistently make modest, achievable bids rather than repeatedly risking large ones that fail.

Common Variations

• Open trump: some casual groups turn the trump indicator face up immediately after it is chosen instead of keeping it hidden, trading away the concealment mechanic for a simpler, faster-paced game that beginners find easier to follow.
• Eight-card bidding: after the trump indicator is set and the final cards are dealt, some rule sets allow 1 further round of higher bids, starting at 250, before play begins, letting a confident partnership push the contract up once they have seen their full 8-card hand.
• Caps: a partnership confident of winning every 1 of the 8 tricks in a hand may declare Caps before play begins; a correctly called and completed Caps is worth a large token bonus, while a wrongly called one is penalized heavily.
• Six-player and 8-player tables: regional adaptations split the table into 3 or 4 partnerships instead of 2, usually trimming the pack further so the deal still divides evenly among everyone seated.

Tips and Strategy

• Count your Jacks and 9s before bidding, since together those 2 ranks carry more than half the pack's 304 scoring points despite there being only 8 of them combined; a hand with 2 or 3 Jacks already justifies a confident opening bid even without many Aces.
• Choose your trump suit for length rather than raw scoring value. A 4 or 5-card suit anchored by the Jack and 9 will out-trick a short 2-card suit stacked with high-scoring but easily trumped Aces and Tens.
• Keep the trump indicator concealed for as long as the hand allows. Every extra trick played without revealing it forces the defending partnership to guess blindly about which of the 4 suits to hold their high cards back in.
• Track which high-value ranks, Jacks, 9s, Aces, and Tens, have already fallen in earlier tricks; once all 4 Jacks are gone, the remaining 9s become the most powerful cards left in play.
• As a defender, hold your own trumps in reserve to intercept the trump-maker's Jacks and 9s rather than spending them early on tricks worth 0 or 2 points.

Glossary

• Trump indicator: the card the trump-maker sets aside face down after winning the auction; its suit is trump for that hand.J♠
• Trick: 1 round of 4 cards, 1 played by each player in turn; the highest trump, or the highest card of the suit led if no trump was played, wins it along with its scoring points for that side.
• Trump: the suit fixed by the trump indicator for the hand; any card of that suit beats every card of every other suit.
• Closed trump: the traditional style of play in which the trump indicator, and any trump card a player is forced to use before it is revealed, stays hidden until a player actually needs it to win a trick.
• Card points: the fixed scoring value assigned by rule to each rank, from Jack at 30 down to 7 and 8 at 0; these, not the number of tricks won, decide whether a bid succeeds.
• Token: the match-level scoring unit exchanged between partnerships after every hand; a side that runs out of tokens loses the match.