Chinese Poker rules: arrange thirteen cards, then score each opponent
The first decision in closed Chinese Poker is where all thirteen cards belong. You already have the complete deal. There is no next draw to rescue an unfinished flush, and no betting round in which to persuade an opponent to fold. Arrange three legal hands, reveal them when the setting is complete, then compare matching rows.
Sora has given the HPD spade three empty mats and a scorebook. Their workshop starts with a layout that needs repair, continues through a three-player comparison, and finishes with two royalty cases that look similar but pay differently. Use a deck and paper if you want to follow along; the points do not need a cash value.
Choose a route through the workshop
- New to the game? Read the three-row layout, then try the repair exercise
- Want to rearrange the deal? Open the row-assignment checker and keep the same thirteen cards
- Comfortable with ordinary poker hands? Go to the named scoring profile and the three-player scorebook
- Already comparing rows? Focus on the royalty table and the two different royalty settlements
Two practice controls give local feedback without sending or saving your choices. Four answer panels are placed beside the work they explain. Keep each closed until you have written a result. Tab moves to a panel; Enter or Space opens and closes it. The agreement checklist at the end separates what you checked in a layout from what the table must settle before play.
Which Chinese Poker rules are we using?
This is traditional closed, or closed-face, thirteen-card Chinese Poker. The numerical examples use SwC’s published closed Chinese Poker scoring profile: one point for each winning row, one additional overall point for winning at least two rows, and the specific royalty table below. These amounts are not presented as universal Chinese Poker rules.
All thirteen cards are dealt privately before you arrange the layout. Open-Face Chinese Poker and Pineapple OFC build their layouts through successive placements; their dealing choices, Fantasyland rules and common bonus schedules do not belong in this closed-game worksheet. The shared three-row shape does not make their scoring interchangeable.
Game names can be imprecise. You may encounter Chinese Poker called Pusoy, but a local name alone does not establish this scoring profile. In particular, do not assume Pusoy Dos or every regional game using a related name has these rules. Ask which game and which points schedule the table is actually playing.
The public SwC page explains the normal row scoring and the royalty interactions used here. It does not spell out every edge settlement. This lesson identifies those gaps rather than borrowing an answer from OFC. The scored examples avoid fouls, tied royalty rows and stake caps; the separate foul exercise checks legality without assigning a penalty amount.
Set three cards in front, five in the middle and five in back
Use a standard 52-card deck without jokers for this workshop. Up to four players can each receive thirteen cards. Every card in your deal is used once in your own layout. There are no community cards, no replacement draw and no spare card to discard.
| Row names | Cards | Required place in the layout |
|---|---|---|
| Front or top | 3 | Weakest of your three hands |
| Middle | 5 | Between front and back |
| Back or bottom | 5 | Strongest of your three hands |
Compare your own rows first. A front that outranks the middle, or a middle that outranks the back, creates a foul. Winning a row against an opponent does not repair an illegal arrangement. All legal examples in this workshop use clearly ordered rows, so none relies on a borderline equal-strength interpretation.
Then compare each row with the same row of an opponent: front against front, middle against middle, back against back. Do not compare your back to their front simply because those are the two strongest-looking hands on the table. Legality within a layout and winning against another layout are different checks.
The front has only three ranking categories
A front can be high card, one pair or three of a kind. A run of three ranks is not a straight, and three matching suits are not a flush. The ordinary high-hand comparisons still matter within the allowed categories: compare the pair rank before its kicker, or compare unpaired ranks from highest downward.
| Front cards | What they actually make |
|---|---|
| A♥ K♥ Q♥ | Ace-high; neither a straight nor a flush |
| 7♠ 7♦ K♣ | A pair of sevens with a king kicker |
| 2♠ 2♥ 2♦ | Three deuces |
The middle and back use ordinary five-card high-poker rankings. Straights and flushes count there. Aces may be high, or low in a five-high A-2-3-4-5 straight; they do not wrap around in a sequence such as Q-K-A-2-3. If those categories need a refresher, the comparison section of HPD’s Five-Card Draw guide covers five-card high hands. Chinese Poker uses the rankings, not that game’s draw procedure.
Category names are only the first comparison. When two middle rows are both two pair, compare the higher pair, then the lower pair, then the kicker. When two back rows are flushes, compare their highest cards downward until a rank differs. Equal complete rank patterns tie; suits do not award an extra point.
Check a layout before confirming it
Here is the spade’s first arrangement. All thirteen cards are present and each row has the correct number. That is necessary, but it is not enough. Find the ordering error, then repair it without drawing or replacing any card.
| Row | Proposed cards |
|---|---|
| Front | Q♠ Q♥ 2♣ |
| Middle | 9♠ 9♦ 8♣ 6♥ 3♦ |
| Back | A♠ K♠ J♠ 10♠ 4♠ |
Reveal the error and one legal repair
The front pair of queens outranks the middle pair of nines. That is a foul even though the ace-high flush is correctly placed in back. One repair is to exchange the two queens and two nines between the front and middle, leaving their other cards where they are.
| Row | Repaired cards |
|---|---|
| Front | 9♠ 9♦ 2♣ |
| Middle | Q♠ Q♥ 8♣ 6♥ 3♦ |
| Back | A♠ K♠ J♠ 10♠ 4♠ |
The front is a pair of nines, the middle a pair of queens and the back an ace-high flush. Every row has the required count and the strength increases toward the back. This is a legal repair, not a claim that it is the strategically best arrangement of the deal.
Make the check before confirming the setting. Follow the room’s procedure for locking and revealing a layout; an opponent’s revealed cards are not an invitation to rearrange your own. No numerical foul penalty is calculated in this exercise.
A legal change can improve one row and weaken another
Keep the repaired pair of nines in front and the pair of queens in the middle. Now exchange the front deuce with the middle eight. The rows stay legal, but the change is not free. The front pair now has an eight kicker instead of a deuce; the middle pair now starts its kickers with a six instead of an eight.
| Row | Higher-front-kicker setting |
|---|---|
| Front | 9♠ 9♦ 8♣ |
| Middle | Q♠ Q♥ 6♥ 3♦ 2♣ |
| Back | A♠ K♠ J♠ 10♠ 4♠ |
If an opponent also has nines in front, that better kicker may decide the row. If an opponent has queens in the middle, giving up the eight may decide that row the other way. Against a different pair rank, neither kicker comparison is reached. The ace-high back flush is unchanged. You cannot identify the best arrangement merely by making one row look stronger.
This is why the checker below reports legality rather than a suggested play. It has no opponent model and does not calculate expected value. Use the two legal presets to notice exactly which cards move. Then make a third arrangement of your own and explain its tradeoff before asking the checker to grade the order.
Move the cards with the row-assignment checker
Each line names one fixed physical card. Choose Front, Middle or Back beside it, then press Check my layout. You can make a wrong-sized row, and the checker will ask you to correct the counts before evaluating strength. It cannot create a second queen of spades or replace a card with a new one. All thirteen identities remain on the page throughout the exercise.
The original preset contains the foul shown above. Apply shown repair exchanges the queens and nines; Try higher front kicker also exchanges the deuce and eight. Reset original restores the starting foul, so a reset is not a promise of a legal hand. No selections are submitted, saved or remembered after a fresh page load.
For keyboard practice, Tab to a card selector, use the arrow keys to choose its row, then Tab to a button and press Enter or Space. The result is announced as a status message and remains visible below the buttons. Without JavaScript, the buttons stay disabled; use the printed original, repair and alternative tables with the answer panel instead.
Interactive checker requires JavaScript. The printed layout and repair above remain available.
Try two deliberate errors. First move only a queen from the original front to the middle. You will have two cards in front and six in the middle, so fix the count. Next reset and exchange the entire five-card middle and back. The middle flush now outranks the back pair; the front pair of queens is weaker than that flush. Only the middle-to-back boundary fails in this new setting. Check both boundaries separately rather than assuming every movement creates the same foul.
A foul is an automatic loss; the exact bill needs a rule
SwC’s closed-game page says a fouled hand automatically loses. It does not specify a complete numerical foul settlement, including royalties against a foul or what happens between two fouled layouts. Do not quietly turn that sentence into an assumed six-point penalty, a four-point penalty or a royalty waiver.
Before playing for stakes, obtain those details from the table’s rules. The same applies to exact equal-strength ordering between your own rows and to equally ranked royalty hands. These are deliberately left as table confirmations here. A familiar rule from a different Chinese variant is not evidence that this table uses it.
Write the row points before adding the overall point
For each pair of players, award one point for each row won and charge one for each row lost. A tied row contributes zero. Under the selected SwC profile, a player who wins at least two rows also receives one overall point from that opponent. Count actual row wins; a tie is not half a win.
| Your row results against one opponent | Row-point net | Overall point | Net before royalties |
|---|---|---|---|
| Win, win, win | +3 | +1 | +4 |
| Win, win, lose | +1 | +1 | +2 |
| Win, win, tie | +2 | +1 | +3 |
| Win, tie, tie | +1 | 0 | +1 |
| Win, lose, tie | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Tie, tie, tie | 0 | 0 | 0 |
The first line is especially easy to misread if you learned an OFC schedule. Three row wins plus this one overall point makes four. There is no extra three-point sweep bonus in the profile being used here. Other scoring agreements exist, but a comparison is only useful when its agreement is fixed in advance.
Do not award the overall point just because a player has a positive row-point net. One win and two ties is positive, yet only one row was won. Two wins and one tie does earn the overall point. Writing the three row results first makes that difference visible.
Test the overall-point threshold
Choose your result in each row against one opponent. This calculator assumes two legal layouts and reports only the ordinary row points plus the one overall point. It does not inspect cards or calculate royalties. That narrow job makes it useful for checking whether a tie has accidentally been counted as a win.
Interactive calculator requires JavaScript. The base-scoring table above gives the worked patterns.
Start with Win, Win, Loss and obtain +2. Change only the loss to a tie: the row-point net rises by one and the overall point remains, giving +3. Now change one of the wins to a tie. The row-point net falls by one and the overall point disappears, giving +1. A one-row change can therefore move the total by two points when it crosses the two-win threshold.
Reverse the perspective as a final check. Loss, Loss, Win is −2 for you and +2 for your opponent. Three ties is zero for both. The calculator always shows the opposing entry, which is useful when copying a result into two scorebook columns. If your written pairwise entries do not sum to zero, check the signs before moving to the next opponent.
The controls use ordinary selectors and buttons, with the same Tab, arrow-key and Enter or Space path as the layout checker. Reset score example restores Win, Win, Loss and calculates it immediately. A selection change tells you to calculate again so that an old result is not mistaken for the current selection. The printed table is the no-JavaScript route through the same exercise.
Open a scorebook for three players
Sora, Owen and Pia each set a legal thirteen-card layout. Treat this as a new deal, unrelated to the repair exercise. All thirty-nine physical cards below are different. No row in this deal earns a royalty under the selected table.
Sora’s layout
| Row | Cards |
|---|---|
| Front | A♠ A♦ 2♣ |
| Middle | K♥ K♣ Q♥ Q♦ 3♠ |
| Back | 9♥ 8♥ 7♥ 6♥ 4♥ |
Owen’s layout
| Row | Cards |
|---|---|
| Front | A♣ A♥ 2♦ |
| Middle | K♠ K♦ J♥ J♣ 3♦ |
| Back | 10♠ 9♠ 8♠ 7♠ 5♠ |
Pia’s layout
| Row | Cards |
|---|---|
| Front | Q♠ J♦ 4♣ |
| Middle | 10♦ 10♣ 6♦ 6♣ 5♦ |
| Back | Q♣ 9♣ 8♣ 7♣ 5♣ |
With four players there would be six pairings: A–B, A–C, A–D, B–C, B–D and C–D. Write each once. Recording both A–B and B–A as separate payments doubles the exchange; you only need opposite signs in the two players’ records. In the three-player deal below, three pairings are enough.
Before revealing the scorebook, record the three pairings: Sora–Owen, Sora–Pia and Owen–Pia. Compare the rows in that order. Then total each player’s net points. A three-player deal has three distinct pairings, not one contest in which the strongest back hand takes a common pot.
Open the pairwise scorebook and chip check
Sora and Owen tie the front: both have aces with a deuce kicker. Sora wins the middle because kings and queens beat kings and jacks. Owen wins the back with a ten-high flush over a nine-high flush. Each wins one row, so neither earns the overall point. Their exchange is zero.
Against Pia, Sora wins the front with a pair over high card and the middle with kings-up over tens-up. Pia wins the back with a queen-high flush. Sora’s two row wins earn the overall point, producing +2. Owen beats Pia in the same two rows and also earns +2.
| Pairing | Front for first player | Middle | Back | Overall | Net for first player |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sora vs Owen | 0 | +1 | −1 | 0 | 0 |
| Sora vs Pia | +1 | +1 | −1 | +1 | +2 |
| Owen vs Pia | +1 | +1 | −1 | +1 | +2 |
| Player | Against first opponent | Against second opponent | Net points |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sora | 0 vs Owen | +2 vs Pia | +2 |
| Owen | 0 vs Sora | +2 vs Pia | +2 |
| Pia | −2 vs Sora | −2 vs Owen | −4 |
| Total | 0 |
For a paper conversion only, agree that one point equals three practice chips and give each player fifty chips at the start. Sora gains six, Owen gains six and Pia loses twelve. Nobody reaches a stake cap, and no fees are deducted.
| Player | Starting chips | Point change × 3 | Ending chips |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sora | 50 | +6 | 56 |
| Owen | 50 | +6 | 56 |
| Pia | 50 | −12 | 38 |
| Total | 150 | 0 | 150 |
Pia had the strongest back row at this table but lost points overall. A back-row win is one result inside each opponent comparison. It is not a claim on all the chips or proof that the whole layout won.
Use the royalty table that belongs to this profile
Royalties are additional points for specified strong rows. The SwC closed-game schedule below is the one used in this workshop. Do not add the front-pair bonuses or larger middle-row values you may remember from an OFC table.
| Qualifying hand | Where it is set | Additional points |
|---|---|---|
| Straight flush | Middle or back | 5 |
| Four of a kind | Middle or back | 4 |
| Three of a kind | Front | 3 |
| Full house | Middle | 2 |
Location matters. A full house in the middle qualifies for two; a full house in back is not a listed royalty. Three of a kind in front qualifies for three; three of a kind in the middle is not a listed royalty. A flush alone does not appear in this schedule.
A possible trips-front layout is shown below. The front has three threes, the middle an eight-high straight and the back an ace-high flush. Those categories are properly ordered. The front is a three-point royalty candidate; it still has to be considered within the opponent comparison and the table’s settlement rules.
| Row | Cards |
|---|---|
| Front | 3♠ 3♥ 3♦ |
| Middle | 4♠ 5♦ 6♣ 7♥ 8♠ |
| Back | A♥ J♥ 9♥ 4♥ 2♥ |
The next two cases each contain two legal layouts and use fresh cards. They show the important distinction in this profile: qualifying royalties in different rows are both awarded and offset, while qualifying royalties in the same row are resolved in favor of the stronger hand. The examples use unequal qualifying hands, so no tied-royalty ruling is needed.
Case one: the royalties are in different rows
| Row | Player A cards |
|---|---|
| Front | A♠ K♦ 9♣ |
| Middle | Q♠ Q♥ Q♦ 5♣ 5♦ |
| Back | K♠ K♥ K♣ 7♠ 7♦ |
| Row | Player B cards |
|---|---|
| Front | A♥ J♣ 8♦ |
| Middle | 10♠ 10♥ 10♦ 4♣ 2♥ |
| Back | 6♠ 6♥ 6♦ 6♣ 3♠ |
A has a full house in the middle. B has four sixes in back. Compare the ordinary rows first, then decide whether either royalty cancels the other before it is awarded.
Reveal the different-row royalty settlement
A wins the front with A-K-9 over A-J-8 and wins the middle with queens full of fives over three tens. B wins the back: four sixes beat kings full of sevens. A therefore has a base score of +2, including the overall point.
A’s middle full house earns +2. B’s back quads earn +4. Those royalties are in different rows, so both are awarded. From A’s perspective, the calculation is +2 base, +2 royalty, minus 4 owed for B’s royalty: zero.
| Component | A’s net |
|---|---|
| Row points and overall point | +2 |
| A’s middle royalty | +2 |
| B’s back royalty | −4 |
| Final exchange | 0 |
A won two rows but does not receive a net payment in this case. B’s stronger back royalty offsets the base result and A’s smaller royalty. A’s back full house earns no additional points under this table.
Case two: both royalties are in the middle
| Row | Player A cards |
|---|---|
| Front | A♠ 8♣ 3♦ |
| Middle | 9♠ 9♥ 9♦ 2♣ 2♦ |
| Back | Q♠ Q♥ Q♦ 4♣ 4♦ |
| Row | Player B cards |
|---|---|
| Front | K♠ J♥ 6♣ |
| Middle | 7♠ 7♥ 7♦ 5♣ 5♦ |
| Back | K♣ K♥ K♦ 10♠ 10♥ |
Both middle rows are full houses, each matching the two-point entry in the royalty table. Decide whether that means two equal bonuses automatically cancel, or whether the stronger middle changes which bonus is awarded.
Reveal the same-row royalty settlement
A wins the front with ace-high over king-high and wins the middle with nines full of deuces over sevens full of fives. B wins the back with kings full of tens over queens full of fours. A’s base result is again +2.
The competing royalties occupy the same row. A’s middle hand is stronger, so only A receives the two-point middle royalty. B does not receive an opposing two-point award to subtract. A’s final result is +4; B’s is −4.
| Component | A’s net |
|---|---|
| Row points and overall point | +2 |
| Stronger middle royalty awarded to A | +2 |
| Opposing middle royalty awarded to B | 0 |
| Final exchange | +4 |
This is a four-point exchange without a three-row sweep. Keep the base result and royalties in separate columns so that equal totals do not conceal different reasons for payment.
Write the scoring agreement before the first deal
A useful agreement names the closed game, the point value, the ordinary row and overall scoring, the royalty schedule, and when a round is settled. SwC’s points rules also use table stakes, so available chips limit exchanges. The examples stay comfortably below those limits and do not model capped settlements or rake.
For unresolved cases, ask for explicit rulings: the numerical charge for a foul, royalties involving a foul, two fouled players, equal qualifying royalty hands, and borderline equal-strength own-row settings. Do not start a money game intending to settle those questions after an awkward deal appears.
These boxes are a temporary check for this visit, with no submission or saved progress. Each has a visible label. Tab moves between them and Space toggles the focused box.
For another rehearsal, close the scorebook panel and explain why Sora and Owen exchange no points despite each winning a row. Then explain why the same two-point royalty is counted for both players in neither of the royalty cases. One case uses different qualifying rows and different amounts; the other uses the same row and only the stronger award.
Finding a legal layout and calculating its score are rule skills. They do not show that the arrangement was optimal against unseen opponents, and no example promises a profit. Sora’s next task for the spade is to bring a new thirteen-card deal, keep its setting private, and check the layout before discussing strategy. If you play for money, use affordable limits and a stopping plan; HPD’s limits and breaks guide covers that preparation.
Try the layout repair again, return to the scorebook, or use the arrow to revisit the start.