304 (card game)

304, pronounced three-nought-four, is a trick-taking card game popular in Sri Lanka, coastal Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra in the Indian subcontinent. It is played by two teams of two using a 32-card subset of the standard deck, running from seven through ace in every suit. Cards are dealt counter-clockwise, which is unusual among Anglo-American games, and the player to the dealer's right picks a trump card and places it face down before calling a target score for their team. An opposing player may then name a higher target and choose their own trump. Players must follow the suit led, and a player without the led suit may try to guess the hidden trump. The name comes from the total of the points in the whole set of cards, either 304 or 30.4 depending on the version, and the game twenty-eight is thought to be descended from it. A Maharashtrian version adds marriages and a half-court call.