Dhumbalधुम्बल

Players and cards

Two to six people play with one 52-card pack and no jokers. Dhumbal plays best with three to five.

Every card is worth points, and you want as few points as possible:

• Ace: 1 point
• Two to ten: the number on the card
• Jack: 11, queen: 12, king: 13

The deal

Each player gets five cards. The rest of the pack is the deck, face down, and its top card is turned face up. That card is the first thing the first player may pick up.

Play passes to the right (anticlockwise), as at most tables in Nepal. The player at the bottom of the screen starts the first round, and the winner of each round starts the next one.

Your turn: throw, then pick up

You always throw before you pick up. You may throw:

• one card;
• two, three or four cards of the same rank, such as 7 7 or Q Q Q;
• a run of three or more cards in a row in one suit, such as 4 5 6 of hearts. The ace is low only: A 2 3 is a run, Q K A is not.

Then you pick up exactly one card, whatever you threw: either the top card of the deck, or any one of the cards the previous player threw. From a run of 4 5 6 you may take the 5 from the middle.

The cards you did not take go out of play. What you just threw is what the next player may pick from. Because you throw first and pick up one card, your hand never grows, and throwing pairs and runs is how it gets smaller.

When the deck runs out, the cards that went out of play are shuffled to make a new deck.

Showing

At the start of your turn, before you throw, you may show if your cards add up to 10 or less. You never have to show.

Everyone lays their cards face up and counts their points:

• If every other player has more points than you, you win the round. You score 0 and everyone else adds the points in their hand.
• If anyone has the same as you or fewer, they have made dhumbal and the show has failed. You add your own points plus 25, and nobody else scores. A tie counts against the player who showed.

The round winner is the player who showed, or after a failed show the player with the fewest points (the one nearest after the caller if several are level). They start the next round.

Going out and winning

Scores carry over from round to round. A player whose score goes above 100 is out. Exactly 100 keeps you in.

New rounds are dealt to the players still in. The last player left in the game wins.

How this table plays, and why

Dhumbal is played a little differently from town to town, so here is what this version uses and where each rule comes from.

• Five cards each, no jokers, ace 1 to king 13: the Bhoos guide to Jhyap and Dhumbal and the officialgamerules.org notes on Dhumbal agree. Some Jhyap tables count jacks 0 and queens and kings 10; this table does not.
• Throw before you pick up, with singles, sets of a rank and runs of three in one suit: Bhoos, Yarsa Labs and pagat.com.
• Taking any one card of the previous throw, not just the first or last of a run: pagat.com describes this as the Nepali way, unlike the Israeli game Yaniv.
• Show at 10 or less: Bhoos and the published Dhumbal study on arXiv (2025) use 10. Some families play at 5 and some at 15, so both are options.
• A tie counts against the caller, who scores their points plus 25 while nobody else scores: pagat.com gives 25, not Yaniv's 30, as the usual penalty in Nepal, and Bhoos and pagat.com both say an equal or lower hand beats the show. The Yarsa Labs app counts only a lower one.
• Out above 100, exactly 100 stays in, no score cuts: pagat.com and officialgamerules.org on the Nepali game.
• Playing to the right (anticlockwise): pagat.com and catsatcards.com on card play in Nepal.
• The house rule that you may take a thrown card only after you have thrown a pair or a run comes from the Yarsa Labs app and players on r/Nepal, and is an option here.

Show at 5 or at 15

The default lets you show with 10 points or fewer. Choose 5 for longer, tenser rounds (the older Jhyap limit), or 15 for quick ones.

Thrown cards only after a pair or run

With this house rule you may pick up from the thrown cards only once you have thrown two or more cards together in the round. Until then you must draw from the deck.