How to play the Marriage points calculator

1. Four empty name boxes open. Type at least two names and at most ten. Add player gives you another box, once there are more than two boxes each one has a cross to remove it, and a name can run to 24 characters.
2. Save this group keeps those names for next time. The newest 20 groups are kept, each listed by the names joined together and cut to 24 characters, and choosing one replaces every box rather than filling the empty ones.
3. Set the house rules underneath: the stake, what happens to an unseen player's maal, what the winner collects from each opponent, and what a misdeal costs. The next section goes through all eight.
4. Press Start keeping score. It stays greyed out until two names are filled in, and pressing it opens the form for round 1.

The list of players and the house rules are both fixed the moment the first round is saved. There is no add player button on the board, no way to change the stake, and the only road back to this screen is Start again, which deletes every round you have entered. Get both right before round 1.

There is a way round it. Name everybody who might play, the friend who has not turned up yet included, and leave anybody who is not at the table on Sitting out. It costs them nothing at all.

Ten players are allowed here, where the app's own Marriage tables stop at five seats. Nobody is dealing cards on this page, so the pack is not what sets the limit. Two players called Ram stay two separate rows, so there is no need to invent nicknames.

Eight settings, all on the setup screen, and all frozen once round 1 is saved. The standard column is what most tables play and what the calculators people already use assume.

The five number boxes take anything from 0 upwards, where the game's own page offers a short list instead: 2, 3 or 5 for a seen player and 5, 10, 15 or 20 for an unseen one. Type what your table plays rather than the nearest thing on a list.

One warning about coming back later. The rules you set are remembered only while a session is still stored. Press Start again, close the app, and the next session opens on the standard rules with the stake back at 1.

1. Pick the winner from the row of names, or leave it on Nobody won. That is a real answer: a round everybody gave up on still exchanges maal.
2. Type each player's maal into their row. Whole numbers of 0 or more. A decimal is rounded and a minus sign is read as 0.
3. Check the three buttons on each row: Seen, Unseen or Sitting out. The next section is about those.
4. Tick Won on a dublee if the winner went out on an eighth dublee. Tick Somebody showed seven dublees if the round was a dublee game.
5. If the deal was botched, name who did it under Misdeal by.
6. Press Save round. Cancel throws away everything you have typed for the deal.

The figure at the right of each row is what this round does to that player, and it moves as you type. The strip above the form shows where everybody stood before the round, with anybody sitting out greyed rather than hidden. Between them you can read the whole round before you commit it.

Nothing is stored until Save round. Reloading the page, or letting your phone drop the tab while the next hand is dealt, loses what you had typed for that deal and lands you back on the board.

On the board, every round keeps a pencil beside it. Reopen a round, change it, save it again, and every round after it is worked out afresh, so one correction can move the standings a long way. A round can be edited but never deleted. One entered by mistake has to be edited down to no winner, no misdeal and 0 all round.

1. Unseen maal first. Under murder every unseen player's maal drops to 0 and those points leave the round. Under kidnap the same total is added to the winner's maal. Under counts for everyone nothing changes.
2. The exchange. With n playing and M the maal left after step one, each player's figure is n times their own maal, less M. Everybody exchanges with everybody, which is why one big maal moves every row on the screen.
3. The winner's points. At the standard rates each opponent pays 3 if they are marked Seen and 10 if they are marked Unseen, plus 5 more each if Won on a dublee is ticked. The winner takes all of it.
4. The doubling. With Better on and the round ticked as a dublee game, every figure in the round is multiplied by two.
5. The misdeal, if there was one. That has a section of its own below.
6. The money. Points times your rate, rounded to the nearest paisa so that both sides of a payment agree on it. Points and money are kept as two separate numbers throughout.

Here is the round the tests pin, worked through. Four players, murder, 3 and 10, a quarter of a rupee a point. Ram wins holding 5 maal and has seen the tiplu. Sita has 7 and has seen, Hari has 0 and has seen, Kusum has 0 and never saw. Kusum is murdered to 0, so the maal counted is 12 and there are 4 playing.

The exchange gives Ram 4 times 5 less 12, which is 8, and Sita 4 times 7 less 12, which is 16. Hari and Kusum are 12 down each. Then Sita and Hari pay Ram 3 apiece and Kusum pays 10, so Ram collects another 16. The round ends Ram 24, Sita 13, Hari 15 down and Kusum 22 down, which at a quarter a point is Rs 6, Rs 3.25, Rs 3.75 owed and Rs 5.50 owed.

Higher is better here, so a positive total means the table owes you. Every round comes to zero across the players who took part, once any unclaimed misdeal points are counted in.

This part is the calculator's own. The Marriage tables in the app have nothing like it, because a program cannot deal the wrong number of cards.

Name the offender under Misdeal by and they are charged 15. Where somebody else won the round, that replaces the winning point they would have paid rather than stacking on top of it, and in a round ticked Won on a dublee the bonus is excused with it, so at the standard rates a seen player is let off 8 and charged 15. The note under the dropdown prints the setting rather than the charge, so in a doubled dublee game it says 15 while the player actually loses 30.

The charge is not handed straight to anybody. It goes into a pot, and the next player to win a round takes the pot whole, the winner of the misdeal round included. Only a round nobody won leaves the pot standing, and the line under the standings then says how many misdeal points are unclaimed.

Two things follow. While a pot is outstanding the totals do not come to zero, and Settle up cannot see the pot at all, so it squares the totals as they stand and can even say that nobody owes anybody while one player is 15 down. Wait for a winner to sweep the pot before you settle up. A winner who also misdealt pays the charge and then takes it straight back with the pot, so it cancels out.

The strip across the top is where everybody stands, in points with the money underneath, ordered by standing so that it doubles as the ranking. The leader wears a crown, but only while their total is above zero, so a table where the leader is level shows none. Under the strip is a line with the rounds played, the rate if it is not 1 a point, and any unclaimed misdeal points.

Below that is one row per round: what the round did to each player, a dot for anybody who sat it out, and the pencil that reopens it. The two rows at the foot are the totals, in points and in your currency. The maal you typed is not kept on this table, so checking a disputed number means opening that round again.

Settle up, which needs at least one saved round, turns the totals into the fewest payments that square the table. The biggest debt pays the biggest credit, again and again, which never needs more payments than there are players less one. Copy summary puts a plain text version on the clipboard for the group chat, a line per player and then the payments. That text comes out in English whatever language the page is in, and the confirmation appears whether or not your browser actually allowed the copy.

Start again asks first and then clears the lot: the rounds, the standings, any unclaimed pot and the saved house rules. There is room for one session, so a second table would wipe the first in any case.

• Set the stake, the seen and unseen rates and the misdeal cost before round 1. Afterwards the only way to change any of them is Start again, and that deletes the scoreboard.
• Name everybody who might play. There is no way to add a player later, and leaving an absent friend on Sitting out costs them nothing.
• The session lives in this browser on this device. No account, no server, nothing to sign in to, which also means that another phone, a private window or cleared site data starts empty.
• Enter maal and nothing else. Winning points, bonuses and misdeals are worked out for you, and typing them in as well counts them twice.
• A row can jump by the whole unclaimed pot the moment you pick a winner, because the winner sweeps it. That is the preview being honest rather than a fault.
• Editing an old round does not push Sitting out forward. Marking somebody out of round 2 after the event leaves them playing in round 3 and everything after it, each of which has to be corrected by hand.

Maal (माल)

The point cards, and the only thing you type. One number per player per round, counted at the table at the end of the deal.

Tiplu (तिप्लु)

The card turned up to fix the wilds and the maal for that deal. Worth 3, or 7 to a player holding both.

Poplu and jhiplu (पोप्लु, झिप्लु)

The ranks one above and one below the tiplu in its own suit. Either is 2, 5 or 10 for one, two or three of them.

Alter (अल्टर)

The tiplu's rank in the other suit of the same colour, worth 5, 15 or 25 at a table that plays alter. Where it is not played it is a joker, worth 0.

Putali (पुतली)

A printed joker, one to a deck and so three in the usual shoe. Wild and worth 5 from the moment it is dealt, which is to say before the tiplu is turned.

Master card (मास्टर कार्ड)

The one extra printed wild in the shoe, worth 10. The most valuable single card in the game.

Marriage (म्यारिज)

Tiplu, poplu and jhiplu together. Worth 10, or 30 for two, in place of the three cards counted separately.

Tunnela (टुनेला)

Three identical cards. Exposed from the deal it is 5, 15 or 25, and most tables pay it only to a player who has seen the tiplu.

Dublee (डब्ली)

Two identical cards. Seven of them are a show, and going out on an eighth is what Won on a dublee means.

Seen and unseen (देखेको, नदेखेको)

Whether a player saw the tiplu this deal. It sets what they pay the winner and what becomes of their maal.

Murder and kidnap (मर्डर, किडन्याप)

What becomes of an unseen player's maal. Murder throws it away, kidnap hands it to the winner. Murder is the standard.

Better (बेटर)

The house rule that doubles a whole round in which somebody showed seven dublees. Off unless your table plays it.