Tin Gau Dominoes

Tin gau is one of the old tile games of southern China, and it belongs to the same family as mahjong in Hong Kong and big two in the sense that it is a game people grow up watching their elders play. It uses Chinese dominoes rather than cards, it needs exactly four players, and it is a trick-taking game, which makes it quite different from most of the tile and card games you will meet in a Hong Kong games parlor. If you have seen a set of small black tiles with white and red pips on a table in a cha chaan teng or a family home, there is a good chance it was a tin gau set.

This page explains the tiles, how a hand is set up and played, how scoring works, how tin gau differs from its better-known cousin pai gow, where the game came from, and what to know if you play for money.

The set: tiles and their values

A tin gau set has 32 tiles, the same set used for pai gow⁶. The tiles look like dominoes: each is divided by a line into two halves, and each half shows a number of pips from one to six. Some combinations appear twice in the set, so the 32 tiles cover 21 distinct designs.

The set is divided into two suits, called the civil suit and the military suit¹. This division is the heart of the game, because the suit of the tile you play matters as much as its rank.

In the military suit, the ranking from highest to lowest is:

Each of these names is simply the Cantonese word for the number of pips shown, so the naming is easy to remember once you know your numbers in Cantonese¹. Note that the military suit contains no tile showing a total of one, two or four pips, and that the two nines, the two eights, the two sevens and the two fives each rank equally, which matters when two players both follow suit with the same rank.

The civil suit is ranked separately, and the two suits do not compete against each other directly. Instead, the suit that is led in a round determines which tiles can win that round, which is the trick-taking mechanic explained below.

Within the whole tile system, the highest possible pair is the Gee Joon, the supreme pair, made up of the [4-2] and [2-1] tiles⁷. This pair is famous from pai gow as well, and it is the one combination every player learns first.

Setting up a hand

Tin gau is a game for exactly four players using one set of dominoes³. There is no popular two-player version with a standard rule set; anyone playing heads-up has to improvise, usually by adapting the four-player rules, so in practice you want a full table⁸.

The setup begins with all 32 tiles mixed face down on the table. The players then stack them into eight piles of four tiles each, an arrangement known as the wood piles². Building the wood piles is a small ritual in itself: players take turns stacking tiles, and the neat rows of face-down piles are one of the visual signatures of the game.

Once the wood piles are built, each player, including the player acting as Banker, is dealt four tiles from the piles². So a hand consists of four tiles, and four players dealt four tiles each use only 16 of the 32 tiles, leaving the other half of the set sitting in the wood piles².

Before play begins, one player must take the role of Banker or first player. In the historical descriptions of the game this player is called the tsò chong, and the role matters for the stakes, because the first player pays and is paid at double the rate of everyone else³. The Banker position typically rotates around the table from hand to hand, so over a session everyone takes their turn at the extra risk and the extra reward.

How a round is played

Tin gau is a trick-taking game¹. If you know trick-taking card games such as spades or tarot games, the structure will feel familiar: players play tiles in turn, and the highest tile of the suit led wins the round, called a trick.

The flow of a round is:

1. The leader plays a tile, or in some versions a set of tiles, face up on the table.
2. Each other player in turn must respond. If they can follow with tiles of the same suit, they must do so, and the highest tile of that suit wins the trick.
3. If a player cannot follow suit, they may play any tile, but a tile of the wrong suit cannot win the trick.
4. The winner of the trick leads the next round.
5. Play continues until the hands are played out and the results are settled.

Because each player holds only four tiles, a hand is short and sharp. The skill is in reading which tiles have already appeared, judging when to win a trick and when to let it go, and setting up your remaining tiles so you can capture the tricks that matter.

There are special payouts that spice up the scoring. In the historical rules, if any player except the first player wins a round with the pair [2-4] and [1-2], called chí tsün, the first player must pay that winner four times the stake, while the other players pay double. Four corresponding pairs pay eight times and four times respectively³. These bonus hands are rare, which is exactly why they carry the extra weight.

Scoring and winning hands

At the end of a hand, the score is settled by counting the tricks each player has captured and paying according to the differences. The first player, the tsò chong, always pays twice the amount when he loses and is paid double when he wins³. If the first player holds his position across successive games, the ratio escalates, to 3 to 1 in the second game and 4 to 1 in the third³. This escalating structure is why the Banker role is both coveted and feared: a strong player who keeps winning as first player is paid at an accelerating rate, but a losing streak in the seat gets expensive fast.

The chí tsün bonus described above is the main special hand³. Beyond that, the scoring is straightforward arithmetic: winners collect from losers based on tricks taken, with the first player's payments doubled.

If you come to tin gau from pai gow, do not expect pai gow-style hand rankings such as Gong (a 12 tile with any 8, or a 2 with any 8)⁹. Those rankings belong to pai gow's make-nine system and have no place in tin gau, where individual tile ranks within suits decide every trick.

Tin gau and pai gow: how they differ

The two games are constantly confused because they share the same 32-tile set, but they are entirely different games.

Pai gow means "to make nine"⁶. It is a banking game: everyone plays against a banker, each player is dealt four dominoes and splits them into two hands of two tiles, a high hand and a second hand¹⁰. The player wins only if both of their hands beat the banker's corresponding hands. The challenge is to arrange each pair so the pips total as close as possible to nine, a perfect score, with totals above nine counted by their last digit⁹. When hands total the same, the tie is judged on the rank of the highest tile, not the number of pips¹¹.

Tin gau, by contrast, is a trick-taking game for four players¹. There is no banker to beat in the pai gow sense, no splitting into high and low hands, and no make-nine arithmetic. You play tiles to win tricks, and the suits govern what beats what.

There is even a third cousin worth knowing about: Goo Pai, played in Hunan, which uses the same tiles and looks something like tin gau but has very different rules, with rankings similar to pai gow and no triplet or quadruplet combinations, scored simply by stacks won¹. So if you sit down at a table of Chinese dominoes outside Hong Kong or Guangdong, check which game the table is actually playing before you assume anything.

For completeness, there is also pai gow poker, a modern table game that mixes the ancient tile game with seven-card poker, played with a 53-card deck including one joker⁹. It is a sociable game with a relaxed pace⁹, and it is common in American casinos, but it has nothing to do with tin gau beyond the borrowed name.

A short history

Tin gau is old. Stewart Culin's research on Chinese games with dice and dominoes, published in the 1890s, described several t'in kau variants played with one set of dominoes, including two-player versions, and recorded the chí tsün bonus payouts and the doubled stakes for the first player³.

The game traveled with Cantonese communities and remains best known in Guangdong, Hong Kong and the overseas Chinese diaspora. In the old Chinese gambling houses of North America, domino games of this family were among the staple games, and pai gow in particular became the best known of them in the West¹³. Tin gau stayed more of a community and home game, which is part of why written rules in English are thinner on the ground than for pai gow, and why local house rules vary from one table to the next.

Playing tin gau online

Here is the practical reality: you will not find tin gau as a live dealer or table game at mainstream online casinos. The live casino lobbies focus on games with broad international appeal, such as baccarat-style card games and sic bo, and Chinese dominoes games beyond pai gow tiles are rare. If you want to play tin gau against real opponents online, your options are essentially social and hobbyist platforms, including the long-running sites and blogs maintained by enthusiasts of the game², rather than commercial casino products.

What you will find online is pai gow tiles and pai gow poker at some casinos, and if your interest is Chinese dominoes generally, those are the closest games available. For the broader picture of what is and is not available to Hong Kong players online, see online gambling in Hong Kong.

If you are learning the game, the enthusiast resources are genuinely useful: the rules summaries and tile-ranking tables maintained by game historians let you check a ranking dispute without waiting for the next session¹.

Playing for money

Tin gau is, traditionally, a gambling game. It belongs to the classic gambling family of Chinese dominoes games¹⁴, and the doubled and escalating stakes for the first player only make sense in a money context³. Games of this family have long been the staple of Chinese gambling houses³.

In Hong Kong today, the legal gambling options are the ones offered by licensed operators, such as horse racing, the Mark Six lottery and licensed football betting. Unlicensed games for money are not permitted, so tin gau in Hong Kong is in practice a home and social game, usually played for tokens, small friendly stakes or nothing at all. The same is true across the region: in Taiwan, for example, openly gathering to gamble with money changing hands is against the law¹⁵. The practical risk for a casual player is simply that an organized money game in a commercial setting is unlicensed, so keep tin gau among friends.

If money play stops being fun, Hong Kong runs gambling counseling services, including a center in Tsuen Wan reachable on 6829 8764⁵, and there is a fuller list on our gambling help in Hong Kong page.

Common mistakes new players make

A few errors come up again and again with newcomers:

• Confusing the suits. New players often assume a high-pip tile beats a low-pip tile regardless of suit. It does not. Only the suit led can win the trick, so a modest tile of the right suit beats a monster of the wrong suit¹.
• Forgetting the equal ranks. The two nines, two eights, two sevens and two fives of the military suit rank equally¹. If you and another player both follow suit with the same rank, do not assume your tile won.
• Treating it like pai gow. Splitting your four tiles into two hands is a pai gow reflex¹⁰. In tin gau your four tiles are played to tricks one by one or in combinations, so plan the order you play them, not pairs you form.
• Ignoring the first player's stakes. If you take the tsò chong seat, remember you pay double when you lose and are paid double when you win, with the ratio escalating if you hold the seat³. New players sometimes accept the seat without registering the extra exposure.
• Playing too slowly and revealing hesitation. In tile games, a long pause before playing tells the table something about your hand. Experienced players keep a steady rhythm.
• Table clutter. Keep wallets, bags and personal items tucked away, and drinks in the holders, so nothing spills on the tiles¹⁶. This is standard etiquette at any tile or domino table.

The best cure for all of these is simply playing a few hands for nothing at all. Tin gau is a fast game, four tiles per hand, and the suit and ranking logic clicks quickly once you have seen a few tricks played out.