Traditional Chinese Card Games

What counts as a traditional Chinese card game

The phrase covers two different things. The first is the family of games played with Chinese money cards or character tiles: narrow cards with suits and denominations, dealt and drawn much like mahjong tiles. One example is Bopi (剥皮), a regional game where the first player to reach 100 hu points and change dealer triggers settlement, and the player with the fewest hu points is "skinned"; a self-drawn win adds 10 hu points⁵. Another is 八一字牌, played mainly in and around Guilin and Liuzhou in Guangxi with 80 cards and three players, each dealt 20 cards while the dealer draws 21.

The second, and what most people mean now, is the cluster of games played with standard Western 52-card (or 54-card) decks that grew up in Chinese communities over the past century: Dou Dizhu, Big Two, Guandan, San Da Yi and their relatives. These are climbing and shedding games, where players try to empty their hands by beating each previous play with a stronger combination.

Both branches are alive. Money-card games like Si Se Pai are still played in southern China and Vietnam, while the Western-deck games are the everyday card play of the mainland, Hong Kong and the diaspora. You can read about the wider scene in gambling in China, and about where people actually gather to play in chess and card rooms (qipai shi).

Here is the quick map of the games this page covers:

Dou Dizhu (Fight the Landlord): the deck and how a hand is dealt

Dou Dizhu is the most played card game in China. It uses all 54 cards of the deck including both jokers, and is usually played by 3 people¹. Each player is dealt 17 cards, and the remaining 3 cards form a kitty. Players look at their hands and bid or compete to take the landlord role based on how good their cards are; the other two players become the peasants, a team of two against the one. The landlord then takes the 3 kitty cards, giving them 20 cards against the peasants' 17 each⁶.

The name describes the structure exactly: three fight one, with the landlord playing alone but holding more cards⁷. The stakes follow the same logic. If each round is set at CNY 100:

A bomb, meaning four cards of the same rank played together, doubles the stake each time one is thrown⁶.

A four-player variant spread through the Jiangsu-Zhejiang area: it uses two decks at once, with 4 people playing, 3 fighting 1⁸. For the full rules, combinations and strategy, see Dou Dizhu (Fight the Landlord).

Big Two (Choh Dai Di): card ranking and playable combinations

Big Two, also called Choh Dai Di, is a shedding game for four players where everyone gets a hand of 13 cards². The twist is in the name: the cards rank from high to low as 2, A, K, Q, J, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, so the deuce is the single most powerful card in the deck².

Play is a climbing game. The player who holds the three of diamonds begins and must play that card². After that, each play must beat the previous one in the same category: a single card beats a single, a pair beats a pair, a five-card combination beats a five-card combination. Among the five-card combinations, in ascending order:

1. Straight
2. Flush
3. Full house
4. Four of a kind
5. Straight flush

Flushes are compared according to the rank of the highest card². If you cannot or do not want to beat the current play, you pass, and the last player to play leads the next round with anything they like.

The game ends when one player runs out of cards. Full rules, variations and worked examples are on the Big Two (Choh Dai Di) page.

Big Two scoring: from 1 point per card to the 39-point penalty

When played for points, Big Two charges you for the cards you are caught holding:

That last row is the worst case: a player who never played a single card pays the maximum².

There is also a social penalty for carelessness. If you ignore a chance to block a player who is down to their last card, and the person after you wins by playing that single card, you have to pay the losses of all three players². In other words, letting someone sail out on a single card can cost you everyone's points, not just your own.

Regional scoring differs. In Indonesia, each card from 3 to ace remaining scores 1 point, but each two remaining scores 5 points, with doubled or tripled totals for players caught with 11, 12 or all 13 cards². In a version played until only one player has cards, the first to run out wins 5 points, the second 3, the third 1, and the last player nothing².

Regional Big Two: Hong Kong's 17-card version and the Philippines' Pusoy Dos

Big Two is not one game but a family. In the three-player Hong Kong version, 17 cards are dealt to each player and the last card is placed face up in the center of the table; the holder of the three of diamonds adds this extra card to their hand².

In the Philippines, the game is called Pusoy Dos, and scoring there rewards a stylish finish: the winner, the first player to run out of cards, normally scores 1 point and the others score nothing, but if the winning play includes one deuce the score doubles to 2, then 4 for two deuces, 8 for three and 16 if the final play contains all four deuces².

The same climbing-shedding idea travels under other names across Southeast Asia. The Vietnamese version, Tiến lên, gives the twos their own point values when they are caught in hand: the two of spades is worth 1 point, the two of clubs 2, the two of diamonds 3 and the two of hearts 4, with special combinations like three consecutive pairs or four of a kind also worth 4 points⁹.

Si Se Pai (Four Color Cards): four suits, four of each denomination

Si Se Pai, Four Color Cards, is the clearest surviving example of the Chinese money-card tradition. The deck consists of four suits of 28 cards each and 5 jokers³. Like a mahjong set, there are four identical cards of each denomination³. There are 7 types of card, and they carry the same characters as in Chinese Chess¹⁰:

You are dealt 20 cards, but a winning hand has 21¹⁰. Groups can be anywhere from 1 to 4 cards, and only a King counts as a group by itself¹⁰. You can steal a card that someone has drawn or discarded in 3 situations:

• To win
• To make a Quad (which is forced)
• To make a Triplet, unless it is a King

The game is closely related to Tứ sắc in Vietnam, where scoring is counted in lệnh: a set of 3 revealed cards, such as chariot-cannon-horse or general-advisor-elephant, scores 1 lệnh, and four Soldier (Chốt) cards of different colors score 2 lệnh¹¹. The full rules, card list and scoring table are on the Four Color Cards (Si Se Pai) page.

Partnership climbing games: Guandan, San Da Yi and the four-player favorites

Beyond Dou Dizhu, the Western-deck tradition in China leans heavily on fixed-partnership games. Guandan, hugely popular in Jiangsu and Anhui, and its older relative Zheng Shangyou, seat four players in two teams, with partners sitting opposite each other and working together to shed their hands through escalating combinations. San Da Yi, a Shanghai favorite, is another of this family: a climbing game where the lead and the combinations matter more than the bidding.

These games share a common shape with Dou Dizhu's four-player cousins. The press describes the pattern well: Da Bai Fen (Da Bai Fen), for example, is played with two decks by 4 people, and can be scaled up to three decks and 6 players⁸. Dou Dizhu itself made the same journey, with the Jiangsu-Zhejiang version using two decks for 4 players, 3 fighting 1⁸. If you want the partnership games in depth, see Guandan and Zheng Shangyou and San Da Yi (Shanghai card game).

Character-card games: 八一字牌, Bopi and the money-card survivors

These games are increasingly a living-room and festival tradition rather than a gambling-house one, but they are the direct ancestors of Si Se Pai and, through it, of the card cultures of Vietnam and beyond. For the modern venues where card games of all kinds are played, see chess and card rooms (qipai shi) and card and mahjong apps.

Playing online: Viwawa, QQGame and Tiantian Doudizhu

The traditional games have moved wholesale online, and the numbers show how big they are. In April 2015, Huan Le Dou Di Zhu, a Happy Dou Dizhu title, ranked No. 6 among the top 10 free iOS game apps in China⁴, a sign of how mainstream the game had become.

Tencent's QQGame platform carries its own versions with house rules that differ from the kitchen-table game. One QQGame card game is a 6-player game using 3 decks of playing cards, 162 cards in total, dealt at 27 cards per player¹². Its card ranking runs from high to low as big joker, small joker, 2, A, K, Q, J, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, with no ranking between suits¹². The platform also runs a level system, where reaching level 4, for example, takes 520 points of accumulated play¹².

On the developer side, Chanyou Technology built its business on exactly these titles: its main products are Dou Dizhu, Kuaiyu Bushou and Sichuan Mahjong, with Tiantian Doudizhu (Real Person Version), a live-opponent Dou Dizhu game, its most representative product¹³. The appetite extends to casino floors too: at least one electronic table product has been themed on the game, built around a popular Chinese card game that translates as "Beat the Landlord"¹⁴.

For the wider world of playing cards for money online, see poker in China, online poker in China and online gambling in China.