Play Chinese Poker Online
Set your three hands against the AI under standard scoring rules.
| Win 2, lose 1 | +1 pt |
| Scoop (win all 3) | +6 pts |
| Lose 2, win 1 | −1 pt |
| Scooped (lose all 3) | −6 pts |
| Surrender | −3 per opp |
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Claim Bonus →How to Play Chinese Poker
Two to four players each receive 13 cards from a standard deck, with no draws, no community cards and no betting. Each player splits the 13 cards into three hands that must rise in strength from front to back.
| Hand | Cards | Requirement |
|---|---|---|
| Front | 3 | The weakest hand. Only high card, a pair or three of a kind count, since straights and flushes need five cards. |
| Middle | 5 | At least as strong as the front. |
| Back | 5 | At least as strong as the middle. |
Hands are compared with the standard poker hand rankings. A set that breaks the order, such as a middle hand that beats the back, is a foul and loses all three hands to every opponent.
When everyone has set, each hand is compared against the matching hand of every opponent: front against front, middle against middle and back against back.
Scoring
This game scores with the 1-6 rule. Winning two of the three hands against an opponent earns 1 point from that opponent, and winning all three (a scoop) earns 6. Because a scoop costs six times a simple loss, most hand-setting decisions come down to making sure at least one of the three hands can win.
Two other rules appear in home and casino games. The 2-4 rule pays 2 points for winning two hands and 4 for a scoop. Games that allow surrender let a player give up the deal after seeing the cards for 3 points to each opponent, which under the 1-6 rule is correct whenever the chance of being scooped reaches 40%.
Reading the Analysis
Analyze shows the engine's best setting for the current deal, with a label on each hand. "Top 15%" means the hand beats 85% of the hands an opponent sets in that position when they set optimally. The percentiles come from 100,000 deals the engine played against itself, and the full tables are in the Chinese Poker strategy guide.
Play against the AI scores your setting against three computer opponents and shows what the engine's own setting would have scored against the same hands.
Hand-Setting Rules of Thumb
- Protect against the scoop. A high pair in the front, trips in the middle or an ace-high flush in the back each make a scoop unlikely.
- Split two leftover pairs. With a strong back and two pairs left, one pair in the front and one in the middle usually beats two pair in the middle, and more so when the lower pair is eights or better.
- Five pairs go front first. Highest pair and best kicker in the front, third and fourth pairs in the middle, second and fifth pairs in the back.
- Four pairs put the second pair in front. The highest pair goes in the middle and the two lowest in the back, so the hand is worth as much as its second highest pair.
- Small flushes and small full houses can be broken up when that buys a clearly stronger front or middle. In the back, a Q-high flush sits 25 percentiles below an A-K-high flush.
The full strategy guide covers three-pair hands, full houses in the back and a percentile rule for when to surrender.
Open-Face and Pineapple
This trainer plays regular Chinese Poker, where all 13 cards arrive at once and are set in private. In Open-Face Chinese (OFC), players receive five cards and then one per round, placing each face up, and a card cannot be moved once it is placed. Pineapple OFC deals three cards per round after the first five: two are placed and one is discarded.
Both OFC formats pay royalties for premium hands in each row. A player who sets Q-Q or better in the front without fouling goes to Fantasyland, where the next deal arrives as all 13 cards at once. The OFC rules section lists the royalty schedule and the conditions for staying in Fantasyland.
