Lakdi, lakadi wala game, ghochi, kathi, locha, call bridge, call brake. Those are all the same card game, and that game is Callbreak. If you searched for one of those names, you have landed in the right place.
Four players. One 52-card deck. Thirteen cards each. Spades are permanent trumps. Everyone calls how many tricks they will win before a card is played, and then tries to hit that number. The name changes from district to district. The game underneath barely moves.
One word to put aside straight away. Tash, taas, ताश is not the name of this game. It is the general word for playing cards. "Tash khelne" covers Callbreak, marriage, teen patti and every other card game at once, so nobody can tell what you mean from that word alone.
Scoring on paper? Callbreak Score Tracker handles the tenths and the negatives so nobody at the table has to. Free and offline.
The names, region by region
| Name | Where you hear it |
|---|---|
| Callbreak, Call Break, call brake | Nepal and India — the usual name there, in its common spellings |
| Call Bridge | India and Bangladesh; the name the Pagat reference description uses |
| Lakdi, Lakadi, "lakadi wala game", लकड़ी | India, the Hindi belt |
| Ghochi, Gochi | regional |
| Kathi | regional |
| Locha | regional |
| Tash, Taas, ताश | not a game name at all — it means playing cards |
The game is popular in Nepal, India and Bangladesh. Those three countries are where almost every one of these names comes from, and they cross borders freely. A Kathmandu table and a Delhi table can use different words for the same game. What the two have to agree on is the house rules, not the name.
The spelling wobbles because the name is spoken far more often than it is written. "Call Break" as two words, "Callbreak" as one, "call brake" spelled the way it sounds: people type all three into a search box and mean the same game. None of them is wrong enough to matter. This series spells it Callbreak.
Where the names come from
Nobody has written it down properly.
The names are attested — you can find people playing under each of them — but the origin of "ghochi", "kathi" or "locha" as a card game name is not recorded in any source worth citing. If someone at the table tells you a confident story about how the game got its name, treat it as a story. It might be true. It is not documented.
The one thing that is plain language rather than folklore: लकड़ी, lakdi, is the Hindi word for wood or a stick. That is the dictionary meaning of the word itself. Why a trick-taking card game picked it up is exactly the part nobody has established, so this post will not invent a reason.
That matters more than it sounds. Pages about this game fill the gap with a made-up etymology, and the invented story gets copied until it sounds settled. The useful fact is not where the name came from. It is that all the names point at one game.
Is it one game, or several similar ones?
One game. Do not let anyone tell you lakdi and Callbreak are different games with different rules. They are the same game with local naming and some rule drift around the edges.
The drift is real, though, and it is worth knowing before you sit down with players from another city. The biggest split is not between the local names at all. It is between the conservative Call Bridge description in the reference literature and the version actually played across Nepal and India.
| The point | The common Nepali and Indian game | Pagat's Call Bridge description |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum call | 1 | 2 |
| Highest sensible call | 13 | 12 |
| Following suit | You must beat the card currently winning, if you can | You are not obliged to head the trick; compulsory overtaking is listed as a variation |
| Length of a game | 5 rounds | No fixed end in the base form; 5-deal and 10-deal games given as alternatives |
| Extra tricks | Worth 0.1 each | An alternative counts success as the call or one more; another variation drops overtrick value entirely |
Read the "following suit" row twice, because it is the one that changes how the game feels. In Nepal and India, if you can follow the led suit and you hold a card that beats whatever is currently winning, you have to play it. It is not a choice. Void in the led suit? You must trump, and if a trump is already down you must overtrump if you can. Only when you can do neither may you throw something away.
There is no "spades must be broken" rule here either. You may lead a spade whenever you like, the first trick included. Pagat does list a variation some groups play — no leading spades to the first trick — so a table that wants it has to say so before the deal.
There is one sub-case that tables genuinely split on. Suppose a trump is already winning the trick and every spade you hold is lower than it. Some tables free you — you are not made to waste a losing trump, so any card is legal. Pagat lists the matching variation, "no wasting a small trump after a suit is already trumped". Other tables make you play the spade anyway. Both are real. Decide it before the deal. The rules for this whole area are worked through in Callbreak rules when you cannot follow the suit.
A corollary that saves arguments: when a trump is already on the table and you hold the led suit, any card of that suit is legal. You cannot beat a spade with a heart, so the must-beat rule has nothing to bite on.
The scoring is the same whatever you call it
This is the part that does not change with the name. Under the standard Nepali and Indian rules, a round scores like this.
| Outcome | Round score |
|---|---|
| You won exactly your call | Your call |
| You won more than your call | Your call, plus 0.1 for each extra trick |
| You won fewer than your call | Minus your whole call |
The third row is the one people get wrong. You do not lose the shortfall. You lose the entire call. Promise 5, win 4, and the round is minus 5, not minus 1.
A caution, because sources disagree here and it is a real disagreement rather than a typo. Some secondary pages state that missing a call of 4 with 2 tricks scores minus 2: only the gap. That is not the mainstream rule. The standard is that the whole call goes negative. Settle it out loud at your table before the first deal.
Pagat's alternative scoring is different again: success means the call or one more, calls of 8 and above score a flat 13 with some groups using 16, and one variation drops overtrick value completely and caps calls at 8. So if you learn the game as "call bridge" from an English source and then play it as "lakdi" with friends, expect the numbers to differ.
One round, four players, real numbers
Four players call 4, 3, 2 and 3. That is 12 calls for 13 tricks, which is an ordinary total. Here is how the round finishes.
| Player | Called | Tricks won | Round score | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bimal | 4 | 4 | 4.0 | Exact. Score the call. |
| Ashma | 3 | 5 | 3.2 | Call plus 0.1 for each of two extra tricks. |
| Tulsi | 2 | 3 | 2.1 | Call plus 0.1 for one extra trick. |
| Hem | 3 | 1 | -3.0 | Missed. Minus the whole call, not minus 2. |
Tricks won add up to 13, as they must. Ashma took two tricks more than she promised and gained 0.2 for it. Hem took two fewer and lost 3. That gap between 0.2 and 3.0 is the whole reason experienced players call low, and it is identical under every name in the table above. There is more of this arithmetic in Callbreak scoring rules, explained with worked examples.
I built Callbreak Score Tracker partly because the name of the game changes and the maths does not. It does two jobs from one scoring engine: it plays full games against bots with the must-beat and must-trump rules enforced, and it keeps the sheet for four real people playing with real cards. Both halves run the same scoring code, so a round scored in the tracker matches a round scored in the played game, decimals included. It runs in several languages, which helps when the table does not share one.
Names that belong to a different game
Two names get confused with Callbreak often enough to be worth separating out.
Spades. This is a genuinely different game, not another name. Spades has partnerships and a shared team bid; Callbreak is every player for themselves, four separate scores. Spades has the "spades must be broken" rule before a trump can be led; Callbreak does not. Spades has bags and sandbagging penalties and nil bids; Callbreak has none of those, and overtricks are a small positive 0.1 rather than a punishment. And Callbreak's must-beat and compulsory-trump rules leave you far less choice about what to play. The full comparison is in Callbreak vs Spades.
Call Bridge. This one is a name for the same game, not a different one, but the ruleset described under that name in English sources is the conservative one in the table above. So a page titled "Call Bridge rules" may tell you the minimum call is 2 and that you are not obliged to head the trick, both of which would get you corrected at a table in Kathmandu or Patna. Same game, older description. Callbreak vs Call Bridge takes that apart properly.
Common mistakes
Assuming lakdi is a different game. It is not. If someone invites you to play lakadi wala game and you know Callbreak, you already know the rules. Ask about the minimum call and the missed-call penalty, and you are ready.
Calling tash a game. Tash means cards. Saying you play tash tells the other person nothing about which game you mean, which is why searches for it return a mess.
Assuming the minimum call travels. It genuinely does not. Some tables allow a call of 1, some set the floor at 2. Both are real rulesets, not one group getting it wrong. Ask.
Assuming a missed call costs the shortfall. It usually costs the whole call. This is the single most expensive misunderstanding in the game, and it is the one most likely to differ from whatever page you read first.
Reading a Spades guide for Callbreak rules. They look similar for two paragraphs and then diverge on trump rules, bidding and penalties. The Spades habit of bidding low and farming safe extras costs you here: a trick you promised is worth a full point, the same trick beyond your call is worth 0.1.
Trusting an etymology. Nobody has documented where lakdi, ghochi, kathi or locha came from as game names. A confident answer is still a guess.
Questions people ask
What is the lakdi game?
Lakdi, or lakadi, is a name used in parts of India for Callbreak: the four-player trick-taking game with spades as permanent trumps, thirteen cards each and a called number of tricks per round. Same rules, different word.
Is "lakadi wala game" the same as Callbreak?
Yes. It is the same game. Learn it under either name and you can sit down at a table using the other. The only things worth checking are the house rules: the minimum call, and what a missed call costs.
What is ghochi?
Ghochi, sometimes spelled gochi, is another regional name for Callbreak. Where the word came from is not documented anywhere reliable, so treat origin stories as folklore. The game it names is the ordinary one.
Is Call Bridge the same as Callbreak?
Same game, different name — but the ruleset usually written up under "Call Bridge" is the conservative one. It sets the minimum call at 2 and does not force you to beat the winning card. The Nepali and Indian game allows a call of 1 and makes overtaking compulsory. Check which one your table plays.
Is tash the same as Callbreak?
No. Tash, taas or ताश means playing cards in general. It is not the name of any particular game. Callbreak is one of many games played with tash.
What is Callbreak called in Nepal?
Callbreak, or Call Break — the English name is the usual one there, spelled several ways. You will also hear taas used loosely for a card session, but that just means cards.
Is it spelled Callbreak, Call Break or call brake?
All three turn up, and all three mean this game. "Call brake" is the spelling people reach for when they have only ever heard the name out loud. This series uses Callbreak as one word.
Do the rules change when the name changes?
Barely, and not because of the name. What changes is the table. The minimum call, the penalty for missing, whether you must waste a small trump, and whether calling 8 carries a bonus: those all vary between groups in the same city, let alone between regions. See Callbreak rules in Nepal and India for the ones that cause real arguments.
Get it: Callbreak Score Tracker — free on iPhone and Android. The link opens your own app store.
