Chinese poker: the rules and the scoring

Players and cards

Chinese poker is for two to four players, with an ordinary deck of 52 cards and no jokers. The dealer deals everybody 13 cards, one at a time. With four players the whole deck goes out; with two or three, the cards left over stay out of play. After every hand, the deal moves one seat on.

With five or more, not everybody can play every hand: four play, and the others sit that hand out, taking turns. Often the dealer deals and is the first to sit out.

Setting your three hands

Everybody sorts their 13 cards into three poker hands, face down:

• The back (or bottom): five cards, your strongest hand.
• The middle: five cards.
• The front (or top): three cards, your weakest hand.

The back has to beat or tie the middle, and the middle has to beat or tie the front. With only three cards, the front can't hold a straight or a flush: the best you can have there is three of a kind. When everybody is done, all hands are turned over at once.

A hand set the right way round

Front	Q♥ Q♣ 3♦ a pair of queens
Middle	10♠ J♠ Q♦ K♣ A♥ a straight
Back	7♦ 7♣ 7♠ 2♥ 2♠ a full house

Which hand beats which

The usual poker ranking, from strongest to weakest:

1. Royal flush: ace, king, queen, jack and ten of one suit.
2. Straight flush: five cards in a row, all of one suit.
3. Four of a kind: four cards of one rank.
4. Full house: three of a kind and a pair.
5. Flush: five cards of one suit.
6. Straight: five cards in a row. The ace counts high, or low in A-2-3-4-5.
7. Three of a kind: three cards of one rank.
8. Two pair.
9. One pair.
10. High card: none of the above, so the highest card counts.

Within the same kind, the higher cards win: a pair of kings beats a pair of queens, and with equal pairs the next highest card decides. Suits never decide anything: two hands that are exactly alike tie.

A foul hand

A middle stronger than your back, or a front stronger than your middle, makes your hand foul (also called a misset): a pair of kings in the front with only a pair of jacks in the middle, for instance.

A foul hand loses all three rows to every player who set theirs right, as if each of them had won all three: in the 1-6 count below, that's 6 points to each of them. Two players who are both foul are even with each other.

Scoring

Once the hands are turned over, you compare your back with every other player's back, your middle with theirs and your front with theirs. You score against each player separately, and two counts are common.

The 1-6 count

A point for every row you win, and 3 bonus points when you win all three rows against the same player: a scoop, worth 6. Win two rows and lose one, and you're 1 point up.

The 2-4 count

A point for every row, and one more for winning most of them: 2 points when you win two rows out of three, and 4 for a scoop.

A row that ties exactly scores nothing for either of you.

Bram, Cas and Dewi count their hands the same way, and the four totals together come to exactly zero: whatever one player wins, the others lose. That's also how you catch a mistake: if a hand's points don't add up to zero, somebody miscounted.

Agree beforehand what a point is worth: ten cents, say, or a euro. At the end of the night, everybody's points times that amount is what they win or pay.

Swapping cards

It isn't part of the classic rules, but plenty of groups play with it: after the deal, before anybody sets their hand, every player passes three cards face down to another player. The direction changes every hand: left, then right, then across the table, and back to the left.

Three cards is usual, but you can agree on another number beforehand. Agree as well what across means when there are three of you.

House rules to agree on

Tables differ on a few points. Settle them before the first deal:

• Royalties: bonus points for a strong hand in a hard place, such as four of a kind in the back, a full house in the middle or three of a kind in the front. The amounts vary, and Open Face Chinese has a table you can borrow.
• Naturals: thirteen cards so special that they win at once, without comparing rows. A dragon (one card of every rank, ace down to two), six pairs, three flushes or three straights, for instance, each worth a fixed number of points from every other player.
• Swapping: whether you swap, and how many cards, usually three.
• The count: 1-6 or 2-4, and what a point is worth.

One game, many names

Chinese poker is played all over the world, under other names and with small differences:

• Pusoy in the Philippines. Not to be confused with Pusoy Dos, a different game, also known as Big Two.
• Capsa Susun in Indonesia.
• Mậu Binh in Vietnam.
• Chinezen in the Netherlands.

Open Face Chinese is a younger variant: you get your cards a few at a time and set them face up, without knowing what comes next. The rules of Open Face Chinese have a page of their own.