Chinese Poker is a card game where each player receives 13 cards from a standard 52-card deck and arranges them into three poker hands—a 3-card front hand, a 5-card middle hand, and a 5-card back hand—with each hand required to be stronger than the one before it. Unlike Texas Hold’em, there are no betting rounds and no bluffing. Every decision comes down to how you set your hands.
The game below lets you practice Chinese Poker against three AI opponents directly in your browser. No download, no registration. Deal your cards, arrange your three hands, and use the Analyze feature to see the mathematically optimal arrangement with percentile rankings for each hand.
Chinese Poker Rules
Chinese Poker can be played with 2 to 4 players. Each player is dealt all 13 cards at once—no draws, no community cards, no betting rounds. You arrange your 13 cards into three hands that must increase in strength from front to back:
If your hands don’t follow this order (for example, your middle hand is stronger than your back hand), it’s called a foul or mis-set, and you automatically lose all three hands against every opponent. Hand comparison uses standard poker hand rankings.
Chinese Poker Scoring (1-6 Method)
Each of your three hands is compared against each opponent’s corresponding hand. Front vs. front, middle vs. middle, back vs. back. Winning a comparison scores +1 point, losing scores −1. The real swing comes from the scoop bonus:
| Result | Outcome | Points |
|---|---|---|
| Win 2, Lose 1 | Simple win | +1 |
| Win 1, Lose 2 | Simple loss | −1 |
| Win 3, Lose 0 | Scoop (3 bonus points) | +6 |
| Win 0, Lose 3 | Get scooped | −6 |
| Surrender | Forfeit against all opponents | −3 per opponent |
Because a scoop costs six times more than a simple loss, the cardinal rule of Chinese Poker is: don’t get scooped. It’s often better to sacrifice one hand to guarantee winning at least one of the other two. If you think there’s a 40% or greater chance of being scooped, surrendering is mathematically correct.
Chinese Poker Strategy: Quick Tips
Setting your 13 cards optimally is where Chinese Poker gets deep. Here are the core principles—for the complete strategy with computer-simulated hand distributions and detailed examples, read our full Chinese Poker strategy guide.
Protect Against the Scoop
Always ensure at least one hand is strong. A high pair in the front, trips in the middle, or an ace-high flush in the back makes getting scooped nearly impossible.
Split Two Pairs
When you have a strong back hand plus two remaining pairs, split them between front and middle rather than stacking two pair in the middle. A pair in the front is far more valuable than two pair in the middle.
5-Pair Hands: Front First
With five pairs, put the highest pair plus best kicker in front, 3rd and 4th pairs in middle, 2nd and 5th pairs in back. The front hand decides the strength of five-pair holdings.
Surrender Liberally
Surrendering costs 3 points—half the price of a scoop. If all three of your hands are weak (combined percentile above 70%), the math favors folding.
The Analyze feature calculates hand strength using percentiles. For example, a front hand at 4% means it’s in the top 4% of all possible front hands—extremely strong. A back hand at 80% means it’s relatively weak. These percentiles map directly to the computer-simulated hand distributions in our detailed strategy article, which analyzed 100,000 optimally-played Chinese Poker games.
Chinese Poker Hands & Combinations
Chinese Poker uses standard poker hand rankings, but the 3-card front hand is limited to three-of-a-kind, pairs, and high card (no straights or flushes). Here’s how often each hand type appears in optimally-played Chinese Poker, based on a simulation of 100,000 games:
| Hand | Front | Middle | Back |
|---|---|---|---|
| Straight Flush | — | <0.01% | 0.99% |
| Four of a Kind | — | 0.01% | 2.62% |
| Full House | — | 0.59% | 34.16% |
| Flush | — | 7.35% | 32.46% |
| Straight | — | 18.22% | 17.64% |
| Three of a Kind | 0.46% | 10.04% | 0.29% |
| Two Pair | — | 26.67% | 9.61% |
| One Pair | 47.08% | 33.00% | 2.23% |
| High Card | 52.46% | 4.12% | — |
The data reveals some key insights: the front hand is a high card more than half the time. Over 90% of deals allow a pair in front, but forcing it often weakens the other two hands too much. The back hand contains a full house or better about 37% of the time, which means two pair or worse in the back is a significant red flag for surrender consideration.
Chinese Poker Variations
Open Face Chinese Poker (OFC) is the most popular variation. Instead of receiving all 13 cards at once, players are dealt 5 cards initially and then draw one card at a time, placing each card face-up. Once placed, cards cannot be moved. This adds a strategic dimension that regular Chinese Poker doesn’t have—you must commit to a hand structure before seeing all your cards.
Pineapple OFC takes it further: after the initial 5 cards, players receive 3 cards per round, place 2, and discard 1. This is currently the most widely played format online. Both OFC and Pineapple include Fantasyland—a bonus round triggered by making Queens or better in the front hand, where you receive all 13 cards at once (a huge advantage).
Royalties are bonus points awarded for premium hands in specific positions. For example, three-of-a-kind in the front or a straight flush in the back. Royalty scoring varies by house rules, but they add an extra incentive to chase strong hands in positions where they’re rare. The practice game above does not use royalties, focusing instead on core hand-setting fundamentals.
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