One round, two minutes, three opponents. No download, no signup, no account — the game loads and you play.
Badam Satti is a four-player card game played with a standard 52-card deck, known across the world under half a dozen names — Sevens, Satti Lagana, Lal Satti, Fan Tan, Parliament and Card Dominoes all describe the same game. The name comes from the card that starts it: badam is the hearts suit in Hindi and Urdu card vocabulary, and satti is the seven.
It is a game of shedding rather than winning tricks. There is no bidding, no trump suit and nothing to memorise before your first round — which is why it spreads so easily at family gatherings, on long journeys and anywhere a deck of cards turns up.
The whole deck is dealt out, thirteen cards each to four players. Whoever holds the seven of hearts plays it, and that card becomes the first foundation on the table. From there, each suit is built outward from its seven in both directions — sixes, fives, fours and down to the ace on one side; eights, nines, tens and up to the king on the other.
A ← 2 ← 3 ← 4 ← 5 ← 6 ← [7] → 8 → 9 → 10 → J → Q → KA suit cannot be touched until its own seven has been played, so the sevens act as keys. On your turn you play one legal card. If you genuinely have no legal move you pass — and only then, because holding a playable card is not allowed here. The first player to empty their hand ends the round.
Scoring runs backwards from most card games: you are collecting penalties, and the lowest total wins. Every card still in your hand when the round ends costs its face value — ace 1, numbers as printed, jack 11, queen 12, king 13. The player who went out scores zero.
A match runs three, five or seven rounds — five by default, changeable at any point from the round badge on the board — and the penalties add up across all of them. That single rule is what gives the game its shape: being caught with the king of spades hurts far more than being caught with three low cards, so the real skill is working your face cards down before the table closes on you. There is a full worked scoring example if you want to see the arithmetic.
You take one seat; Leo, Maya and Nina fill the other three. They cannot see your hand and they do not cheat — each weighs the moves actually available to it, which means they will sit on a seven to keep you stuck and dump a king when a round is clearly lost. They are beatable, which is rather the point.
Start with the full rules, which cover setup, legal moves, scoring and the common house variations. Once you have played a few rounds, the strategy guide explains the decision the whole game turns on — when to play a seven and when to sit on it — along with the mistakes that cost beginners the most points.
If your family plays a different version, the variations page sets out how Satti Lagana, Fan Tan and Parliament differ in opening card, passing rules and scoring. Unfamiliar terms are defined in the glossary.