Chinese Poker Rules and Hand-Setting Strategy

Chinese Poker deals each player 13 cards, with no draws and no betting, and every point is decided by how those 13 cards are split into three hands. The strategy tables below come from 100,000 deals that a hand-setting engine played against itself, the same engine that runs PrimeDope's free Chinese Poker game.

Rules of Chinese Poker

Two to four players each receive 13 cards from a standard 52-card deck and set them into three hands:

Hands are ranked with the standard poker hand rankings. A set that breaks the order, such as a middle that beats the back, is a foul (also called a mis-set) and loses all three hands to every opponent.

Once everyone has set, each player compares front against front, middle against middle and back against back with every opponent in turn. Winning a hand earns a point from that opponent and losing one pays a point. A tied hand scores nothing, so results of 2-0, 1-0 and 1-1 become possible whenever a hand ties.

Scoring systems

Every scoring system is zero-sum: the points one player wins are paid by the others, and the players agree on what a point is worth before the deal.

The 1-6 rule is the most common. It pays three bonus points on a scoop. Avoiding the scoop is therefore the main strategic concern, and every tip below assumes this rule.

Surrender

Some games let a player surrender after looking at the 13 cards. The surrender applies against every opponent at once and, under the 1-6 rule, costs 3 points to each of them.

Royalties

Royalties are bonus points paid automatically for premium holdings in a given hand, such as three of a kind in the front. Payouts vary by house; the Open-Face table further down is the standard schedule. The strategy in this guide assumes no royalties and no naturals.

Strategy tips and tricks

Everything in this section assumes three rules: 1-6 scoring, surrender allowed at 3 points per opponent, and no royalties.

Avoid the scoop

Under the 1-6 rule, losing all three hands costs six times as much as losing two of them. Straights with two or fewer pairs, three-pair hands and hands built from four small pairs are the most exposed. When a hand allows neither a pair of eights or better in the front nor a flush in the back, surrendering is often correct.

One strong hand is enough to make a scoop unlikely: a high pair in the front, trips in the middle or an ace-high flush in the back.

Surrender liberally

A surrender costs 3 points, three times a simple loss and half a scoop. If the alternative to a scoop is losing two hands for 1 point, playing on costs 6p + (1 − p) points when p is the chance of being scooped, which equals the 3-point surrender at p = 0.4. Surrendering is therefore correct whenever the scoop chance reaches 40%. The surrender section sets out which hands meet that bar.

How to set common hand types

Several hand types come up often enough to have a single correct setting, provided there is no straight or flush available.

Five pairs

• Front: the highest pair with the highest kicker
• Middle: the third and fourth highest pairs
• Back: the second and fifth highest pairs

A five-pair hand is never strong, and its value rests almost entirely on the front pair. It is playable in nearly every case where that pair is reasonable.

Example: A♥ A♦ K♦ K♠ J♣ T♣ 8♦ 8♥ 6♠ 5♥ 5♣ 2♠ 2♦

Four pairs

Four pairs with no straight or flush is more common than five and considerably weaker.

• Front: the second highest pair
• Middle: the highest pair
• Back: the two lowest pairs

A single pair in the middle and two low pairs in the back rarely win, so the front is the only hand with a realistic chance, and the hand is worth as much as its second highest pair.

Example: A♦ Q♦ Q♠ J♠ 9♠ 8♣ 8♥ 7♥ 5♠ 5♦ 4♥ 3♦ 3♣

Three pairs

Three pairs without a straight or flush is rarer still, and usually worthless unless all three pairs are reasonable.

• Front: the lowest pair
• Middle: the middle pair
• Back: the highest pair

Example: K♠ Q♣ J♣ T♠ T♦ 8♥ 7♠ 7♣ 6♠ 5♦ 3♥ 3♣ 2♥

Full house in the back

A full house in the back is ranked by its trips alone, so it should always take the lowest pair available. A small full house (fives full or lower) is rarely worth more than a good flush in the back. When breaking one up allows a flush in the back, doing so is often better, since the freed pair can go to the front or middle.

Two pairs left for the front and middle

A frequent layout is a flush, straight or full house in the back with two pairs left over. The choice is between both pairs in the middle, or one pair in each of the front and middle.

Splitting is correct more often. A high pair in the front is worth far more than two pair in the middle, which is an average holding. The higher the lower pair, the stronger the case for putting it in the front. Three signs favour the split:

• No good high card is available for the front.
• The lower pair is eights or better.
• The front pair is protected by blockers. Holding one ace yourself halves the chance that an opponent holds a pair of aces to set in their front.

Example 1

Option B wins more often in simulation and should be the default.

Example 2

Swapping the seven for a king turns the front from A-7-3 into A-K-3 and moves it from the 25th to the 40th percentile in the table below. Option A becomes the better set.

How often each hand type appears

Across 100,000 deals set by the engine, the three hands fell into these categories:

More than 90% of 13-card deals allow a pair in the front, but forcing one there usually weakens the middle and back by more than it gains.

The rank of the top pair decides most middle-hand showdowns. Full houses and flushes together make up two thirds of back hands, so the height of the flush or the trips decides most of those.

Hand strength percentiles

The table below gives the percentile of each hand: the share of optimally set opposing hands in the same position that it beats. A pair of queens in the front sits at 85%, so it wins at least 85% of front-hand showdowns. A hand falling between two rows takes the lower one.

Front. Pairs spread evenly from the 55th to the 95th percentile. High-card fronts are almost all ace-high or king-high, and their kickers matter: A-K-Q sits at the 50th percentile and A-6-x at the 25th.

Middle. Any trips reach at least the 65th percentile. For one pair and two pair only the top pair counts, and kickers or the second pair make no measurable difference.

Back. Flush height matters more than anywhere else in the game: a Q-high flush sits 25 percentiles below an A-K-high flush, and small flushes are often better broken up when that strengthens the front and middle. Even treys full sits at the 65th percentile, so breaking up a full house needs a large gain in the other two hands to pay.

When to surrender

In the 100,000-deal simulation, 6.7% of hands were bad enough that surrendering beat playing them, so the optimal surrender rate is just under 7%. Those are the hands whose chance of winning at least one of the three positions is below 40%.

Adding the three percentiles from the table above gives a working rule:

• A total below 70%: surrender.
• A total of 70% or more: play the hand.

Any hand at the 70th percentile or above covers the threshold on its own, so a single strong hand always means playing.

Hand C shows why a reasonable front is not enough: a pair of deuces reaches the 50th percentile, but the middle and back add only 5 points between them.

Check every arrangement before setting

Thirteen cards can be split into a front, middle and back in exactly 72,072 ways, yet most deals have one clearly correct setting. The costliest common mistake is missing it, for example setting high card, pair and a small flush when the same cards make a pair and two straights. The Analyze button in the Chinese Poker game shows the engine's best setting for any deal, with the percentile of each hand.

Open-Face Chinese Poker (OFC)

Open-Face Chinese deals the 13 cards over several rounds, face up, and a card cannot be moved once it is placed.

1. Each player receives 5 cards and places them into any of the three rows.
2. Players then receive one card at a time and place each before the next is dealt, for eight more rounds.

Pineapple OFC is the format most online tables run. After the first five cards it deals three per round over four rounds, and each player places two and discards one.

Because cards are committed before the rest arrive, fouling is far more common in OFC than in the regular game. A foul loses all three rows to every opponent, pays the scoop bonus, and forfeits the fouling player's royalties, while opponents still collect their own.

OFC royalties

Royalties in OFC are paid whether or not the row wins its comparison.

Middle royalties are double those in the back because the back must still beat whatever the middle holds.

Fantasyland

A player who finishes a hand unfouled with Q-Q or better in the front enters Fantasyland on the next deal, receiving all 13 cards at once while opponents still draw one round at a time. A player in Fantasyland stays for another deal by setting, without fouling, any one of these:

Chasing Q-Q or better in the front raises foul risk, since the middle and back then have to beat it. Weighing Fantasyland equity against that risk accounts for most OFC decisions. House rules for staying in vary, so confirm them before playing.

Where to play Chinese Poker online

Most major rooms have dropped Open-Face Chinese from their clients. CoinPoker still runs OFC as a standalone real-money game and pays a 150% deposit bonus up to $2,000 to new players.

Play OFC at CoinPoker