Bondi — Bhabhi / Get Away Online

What is Bondi?

Bondi (Dhivehi: ބޮނޑި — ބޮނޑި) is the Maldivian name for the shedding trick card game widely known as Bhabhi across South Asia and as Get Away in English. It is played with a standard 52-card deck among 2 to 7 players.

Unlike trick-taking games, there are no teams and no trump suit. Every player is on their own, racing to empty their hand. The first player to shed all their cards gets away; the last player still holding cards is the loser — the "Bondi".

The name "Bondi" refers both to the game and to its signature mechanic: when you hold no card of the led suit, you play a Bondi card — any card from another suit — which abruptly ends the hand and forces the player holding the highest card of the led suit to pick up the whole pile. This single rule creates the game's central tension: winning hands is good (you shed cards), but being the highest card when a void player lurks means eating the pile instead.

How to play

Setup and deal

All 52 cards are dealt out round-robin among the players (roughly 52 divided by the number of players each; the first few seats receive one extra card when the deck does not divide evenly). The player who holds the A♠ leads the very first hand of each round.

Playing a hand

The leader plays any card; its suit becomes the led suit for that hand. Each following player, in seat order, must follow the led suit if they hold it — they may play any card of that suit, not necessarily their highest. All hands consist of one card per still-in player, played to the centre.

The Bondi card

If a player holds no card of the led suit, they must play a Bondi — any card from any other suit. Playing a Bondi ends the hand immediately: players who have not yet acted sit out that hand entirely.

Resolving a hand

How a hand resolves depends on whether a Bondi was played:

• Clean hand (everyone followed suit, no Bondi played): the highest card of the led suit wins. All played cards are discarded from the game — they vanish permanently. The winner leads the next hand.
• Bondi hand (a Bondi ended the hand): the player holding the highest led-suit card played so far is stuck — they pick up every card from that hand (including the Bondi card) into their own hand, and they lead the next hand.

Clean hands are the only way cards leave the game. A Bondi hand transfers cards to the unlucky high-card holder instead.

Going out and finding the loser

After each hand resolves, any player (other than the hand's taker) who is now at zero cards is out — safe, done for the round, sitting out all remaining hands. A player is not safe until the hand is fully resolved: playing your last card while you hold the highest led-suit card, with a void player yet to act, means the pile lands on you and you are back in.

The round continues among players still holding cards until all but one have gone out. The one player still holding cards is the loser — the Bondi — for that round.

The match and the handicap

A match spans a chosen number of rounds (1, 3, 5, or 7). The player with the fewest losses wins the match. To make it harder for a serial loser to recover, the round's loser carries a high-card handicap into the next round: they are dealt the N highest cards in the deck before the rest is dealt round-robin.

• First loss: 2 aces dealt into the loser's hand.
• Each consecutive loss by the same player: one more high card (3 aces, then 4 aces, then the kings follow).
• When a different player loses, the handicap resets — the new loser starts at 2 aces.

Aces are exactly what you do not want — they win hands you would rather dodge and attract Bondi piles. Because A♠ is always in the handicap set, the burdened loser must also lead every handicap round, keeping them exposed from the very first hand.

Ways to play

• Solo vs computer bots — choose 2 to 7 seats and four difficulty levels: Easy, Normal, Hard, and Ultra (a Monte Carlo search AI that tracks every known void and optimises your finishing position).
• Online with friends — create a room and share the invite link. Up to 7 human players; bots fill any empty seats automatically.
• Any device — works in the browser on phone, tablet, or desktop. Installable as a PWA for an app-like experience.
• Free — no cost, no in-game purchases, no ads during play.

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