Mendicot is a traditional Indian card game where to object of the game is to collect 10's. I have come across many alternate spellings like Mindicot, Mindikot, Mendikot etc.
Mendicot is a game played with 2 to 4 players. This page does not currently support more than 4 players however such games are possible using multiple decks. The object of the game is to collect mendis or 10's.
In each round players play one after the other. The player with the highest card in the round wins the hand. The object of the game is to win the majority of hands with 10's. Winning 3 or 4 such hands wins the game. In case players have the same number of mendis then the number of other hands is used as a tie breaker.
After the first player in a round plays a card, all other players must play the same suit in the round. If they do not have any card of that suit they may play any other card or a trump. If they play a trump it will be valued higher than any other suit. So even a 2 of the trump suit will be higher than an Ace of any other suit. If they play any other card, that card will have a lower value even if its an Ace or King.
A trump is selected by one of two methods. It is either secretly hidden by a player before the start of a game. Or the first round in which a player runs out of cards of a suit and plays another suit sets it as the trump suit. Only the second method is used in our version of the game.
For 2 player games each player gets 6 cards to hold and the remaining cards are laid out on the table in a 4x5 matrix of pairs of cards. The top two rows for a player are the opponents cards and the bottom two rows belong to the player. The upper card of the pair is face down and the lower card is face up. As soon as the top card is played the lower card is turned face up. A player can only play face up cards from the table.
For 3 players one deuce is removed out of play and the other cards are distributed among 3 players so that each player gets 17 cards.
When played among 4 players players sitting opposite each other team up. The team that collects 3 or 4 mendis wins. In case each team has 2 mendis the one with more hands wins.