Poker in China

Poker in China: what is legal and what is not

Gambling in mainland China is illegal, and that includes cash poker rooms and casino-style poker tournaments. Macau, the special administrative region an hour by ferry from Hong Kong, is the one exception on Chinese soil, with full casino resorts⁴. For poker specifically, the mainland offers a narrow legal path: clubs licensed as mind sports venues, where you pay membership fees and compete for points and non-monetary prizes rather than cash¹.

The line the authorities draw is about money. Recreational card play is tolerated when there is no profit motive: mahjong games among friends, or chess and card rooms that charge only fixed venue and service fees, are not treated as gambling⁶. The moment cash changes hands based on who wins, the activity crosses into illegal gambling. Organizing or taking part in cash poker is a criminal offense under Article 303 of the Penal Law¹.

For Chinese citizens, the restriction follows you abroad too. Cross-border gambling has been formally criminalized, so a Chinese citizen playing poker for money in a legally licensed casino outside China can still face liability at home⁷. Foreign visitors and residents in China face a different set of risks: those caught gambling online can be blacklisted and banned from re-entry for 10 years⁵.

If you want the wider picture of what is and is not allowed, see gambling in China.

Legal poker clubs: who can play and how

Legal poker in the mainland lives inside sports poker clubs, and there are only a few of them. The best known is the Mo Li Poker Sport Club in Beijing, established in 2012, which is the longest running and the only legal poker room in mainland China. Others have operated in Sanya on Hainan island, and clubs such as the Xian Baoyulin Poker Sporting Club in Xian carry the same sports club format¹.

How a visit works:

• Entry. Both Chinese nationals and foreigners can enter. Foreigners must register with a passport¹.
• Money. You pay a membership fee or entry fee for the venue, not a buy-in that becomes a cash prize pool¹.
• Prizes. Winnings are paid in points, tickets or physical prizes, never cash, because a cash payout would make the game illegal gambling¹.
• Games. Texas Hold'em is the standard format, run as tournament-style play rather than cash tables¹.

Hong Kong, which many visitors treat as the nearby alternative, is actually stricter for poker. Only the Hong Kong Jockey Club may legally run gambling there, and poker is not among its games. Poker does exist in Hong Kong inside private members-only clubs, where games are restricted to paying members who complete a formal membership application before playing⁸.

Playing poker online from China

Online poker for money is effectively dead in mainland China. Online gambling is illegal, there are no Chinese-owned or licensed poker sites, and operating one is a crime. Enforcement energy goes mainly after operators rather than individual players, but players are not immune: authorities warn that even small online bets are illegal, and individuals caught gambling online risk fines and imprisonment¹.

Practical barriers reinforce the legal ones. The Great Firewall blocks direct access to most global poker platforms, and ordinary Chinese payment methods generally cannot be used on the offshore sites that remain reachable, so players who try anyway end up on VPNs and crypto workarounds⁹.

Money lost online is gone for good. Chinese authorities state plainly that funds lost in online gambling are not protected by law and cannot be recovered, so there is no complaint channel if an offshore site refuses to pay out¹⁰.

For Chinese citizens, the same rules reach beyond the border: gambling abroad, gambling online, and providing funds or technical support for gambling all violate Chinese law regardless of where the site or casino is licensed¹¹. Our full page on online poker in China covers the platforms, access methods and risks in detail.

Competitive Er Da Yi Poker National Championship

The most striking example of legal competitive poker in China is the National Competitive Er Da Yi Poker Championship, a state-sanctioned tournament for Er Da Yi, a competitive two-against-one card game in the dou di zhu family. The first championship was announced with a total prize pool of CNY 5,000,000, and the inaugural national champion took home CNY 1,000,000².

The format had two stages. An online stage ran across five partner platforms, with strategic cooperation agreements signed with Lianzhong, Migu, Sina, 360 and Tencent, and players could compete by computer or mobile phone¹³. All participants registered under their real names and earned master points in a unified national ranking, with rank titles attached¹³. Selection ran nationwide as an open audition, roughly a year long, after which the top 2,000 players by master points advanced to the land-based stage, played in internet cafe service venues, followed by semifinals and a grand final².

What makes the championship interesting is the model: poker-style card play, treated as a competitive mind sport, with real prize money, run in cooperation with the country's biggest internet companies. It is the clearest sign of how China separates competitive card gaming from gambling. The partner network eventually grew to include Tuyou, Sina, Tencent, Migu, Ourgame, JJ, Boyaa and Daren¹⁵.

Chinese Poker (Shisan Zhang): rules and scoring

Chinese Poker, called Shisan Zhang or 13-card, is the poker variant that actually belongs to Chinese home culture, and it works nothing like Texas Hold'em. There is no betting round by round and no bluffing. Instead, each player is dealt 13 cards from a standard 52-card deck with no jokers, and arranges them into three separate poker hands³:

The game seats two to four players. Once everyone has set their rows, the hands are revealed and each row is compared directly against the same row of every opponent, using standard poker hand rankings³.

A popular modern offshoot is Open Face Chinese (OFC), where the cards arrive gradually: you get the first 5 cards face up and place them, then receive one card at a time until you hold 13. Because you commit cards before seeing the rest, OFC is as much a puzzle as a card game¹⁷.

Our dedicated page on Chinese Poker (Shisan Zhang) walks through the full rules, royalties and variants.

How the points and scoops work

Chinese Poker is scored in points, and each point carries an agreed value set by the players before the game starts. Each row is worth one point, so in a heads-up match you can win or lose up to three points per deal before bonuses³.

The big swing is the scoop. If you win all three rows against an opponent, you collect a three-point scoop bonus on top of the three row points. You also scoop automatically if your opponent fouls³.

A foul is what happens when you set your hand wrong. The rule is strict: the bottom row must be stronger than the middle row, and the middle row stronger than the top row. If you break that order, your hand is declared foul and your opponent scoops the entire hand, all rows at once. In Open Face Chinese the same principle applies mid-hand: if your top hand ends up stronger than your middle, or your middle stronger than your bottom, the hand is fouled³.

Because a foul costs you everything, the real skill in Chinese Poker is not making the strongest possible hands but making three hands that respect the order while staying strong enough to win rows. A player who puts a flush on top and a pair on the bottom has fouled and lost the deal no matter how good those individual hands look.

What to read next

Two pages go deeper on the subjects introduced here:

• Online poker in China: the full picture of what platforms are reachable, how the Great Firewall and payment blocks work in practice, and what the risks are for players and operators.
• Chinese Poker (Shisan Zhang): complete rules for 13-card and Open Face Chinese, including royalties, scoring examples and variants.

If you are curious about the wider card culture that surrounds poker in China, see chess and card rooms (qipai shi), the venues where most legal card play actually happens, or traditional Chinese card games for games like dou dizhu, the closest local cousin of the Er Da Yi championship game. For the rules on everything else, start with gambling in China.