Variations of Sevens

Satti Lagana, Badam Satti, Lal Satti, Fan Tan, Parliament, Domino, Laying Out, Card Dominoes — one game, many house rules.

Sevens is a folk game. It was never standardised by a governing body, never had a definitive rulebook, and spread by being taught at kitchen tables rather than printed on a box. The result is that almost every family plays a slightly different version, and everybody is convinced theirs is the correct one.

This page sets out the axes along which versions actually differ, and marks which choice this site implements. If your version differs, it is not wrong — and the contact page is open.

The names

The names are regional labels for the same core game rather than distinct games:

• Badam Satti / Lal Satti — South Asia. Badam is the hearts suit (literally "almond", from the shape) and satti is the seven, so the name is effectively "seven of hearts" — the card that opens the game.
• Satti Lagana — "to place the seven", describing the core action.
• Fan Tan — the common name in English-language card literature. Confusingly it shares a name with an unrelated Chinese gambling game.
• Parliament — chiefly British, from the way the cards seat themselves in rows.
• Domino / Card Dominoes / Laying Out — descriptive names, from the way the sequences build outward like a domino chain.

Which card opens the table

This is the most visible difference between versions.

This site opens on the seven of hearts and plays it for you, so a round never begins with a turn that has exactly one legal move. Whoever was dealt that card takes the first real turn.

Passing: optional or forced?

The rule that most changes how the game feels. Two camps:

• Pass only when stuck (this site). If you hold a legal card, you must play it. Passing is available exclusively when you have no legal move.
• Voluntary passing. You may decline to play even when you can, usually with a limit — three passes per round is common, sometimes paid for with a chip or counter.

Voluntary passing makes the game far more tactical, because deliberate blocking becomes available at any moment rather than only when the cards happen to allow it. It also makes rounds longer and, with inexperienced players, occasionally interminable. The forced-play rule keeps rounds brisk and is the more common version in South Asian play.

Dealing

With four players and a standard 52-card deck, everyone gets thirteen cards and the deal comes out even. That is the version implemented here.

With three, five, six or seven players the deck does not divide evenly, and versions differ on the fix: some deal the extra cards out and accept that one or two players start with an extra card, some remove low cards from the deck to make it divide, and some deal the remainder face down as a dead hand. If you play with an uneven number, the "accept the extra card" rule is the least disruptive, and players with the extra card are usually allowed to go first.

Scoring

Nearly every version scores penalties for cards left in hand, and the winner is the lowest total. The differences are in the values:

Face value is the most common and the most strategically interesting, because it makes the king genuinely frightening and gives you a reason to work the top of a suit. Flat scoring turns the game into a pure race to shed cards. See the scoring walkthrough for how the totals build up across a match.

Match length

Some groups play a single round. Others play until a player crosses a points threshold — 100 is common — at which point the lowest score wins. This site uses a fixed number of rounds, three, five or seven, chosen before the match starts, which keeps a session to a predictable length.

Smaller house rules you may recognise

• Kings and aces close a suit. Once both ends are reached the suit is visibly finished; purely cosmetic, but some groups square the pile up to signal it.
• Must open with a seven if you hold one. Removes the choice of whether to hold your seven, and with it much of the strategy.
• Sevens playable at any time. A seven never has to wait; some versions let you lay one even when another card would also be legal.
• Blocked rounds are replayed. Rather than scoring a round where everyone passed, some groups redeal. This site scores it — the hands are counted as they stand.
• Last card announced. Like "uno", some groups require you to announce when down to one card, with a penalty for forgetting.

Why this version was chosen

The version implemented here — seven of hearts opens, forced play, face-value penalties, fixed match length — is the one most commonly described as Badam Satti in South Asian play, and it has the useful property that every rule is unambiguous. A computer opponent cannot negotiate a house rule mid-round, so the version has to be one where no situation is left to the table to settle.