The Chinese Ten card game, online, with friends or the computer

What Chinese Ten is, and which rules we deal

Chinese Ten is a fishing game: four cards lie face up, and you win cards by playing one that pairs with something in the layout. In Chinese it is Jian Hong Dian, pick up red spots, and it gets typed as Chinese 10 as well. The rules we deal are John McLeod's, from his Pagat page, and he calls the flip after every play, one card turned from the stock, the mark of the Asian fishing games. Nobody we read dates the game, so we will not either.

Two, three or four players, each for themselves, no partners. One standard 52-card deck, no jokers. The hand dealt to each player is 24 divided by the number of seats, so twelve, eight or six cards, and four more go face up as the initial layout. The other 24 stay face down as the stock. Suit decides red or black and nothing else, apart from the two black aces, and every card carries its suit symbol as well as its colour.

What takes what, with a turn worked through

The whole game hangs on one rule. A card from ace to nine, the five aside, takes the card that makes ten with it: ace with nine, two with eight, three with seven, four with six. A five takes a five. A ten, jack, queen or king takes its own rank and nothing else. Suit never matters, and one card takes one card from the layout, never two and never a sum, with one exception at the deal, below.

A turn is two cards. Any card in your hand may be played. If the one you play can capture a layout card, it does, and both go face down into your pile; if not, it joins the layout. Then turn the top card of the stock and test it the same way, and the next seat goes. That second card is the part you do not control. It can hand you a capture you did not plan, or drop a red ace where the next seat can take it.

A worked turn. The layout is the three of spades, the three of hearts, the six of clubs and the queen of diamonds. You play the seven of diamonds. It captures a three, and because the red three is worth 3 points and the black one nothing, the table asks which; you choose the red. The stock turns up the queen of spades, which captures the queen of diamonds. Two captures, 20 points in your pile, two cards left in the layout. An ace from your hand would have captured nothing here. One, three and six make ten between them, but a card captures one card, never a sum.

Three or four of a kind on the deal

Fives, tens, jacks, queens and kings can only be taken by their own rank, and that can strand cards. Deal three fives in the initial layout and the one five left in the pack would take a single one, leaving two that nobody could ever take. So there are two opening rules, and we deal both.

The exception first. If the initial layout holds three of one of those ranks, the fourth card of that rank, played or turned, captures all three at once. If it holds all four, the dealer's pile gets them before anybody plays, and the deal starts with an empty table. We do not refill it, which keeps the stock at 24 for 24 turns, where Cats at Cards replaces them from the stock. Between them the two rules mean the last card turned captures the last card in the layout, and nothing is left over.

Scoring: red cards, two black aces, and the tie score

Only the cards in your pile count. Red two to eight are worth their face value, red nine to king 10 points each, red aces 20. The ace of spades is 30 at three or four seats and nothing at two, the ace of clubs 40 at four seats only, and every other black card is nothing. That makes the pack worth 210 points at two seats, 240 at three and 280 at four.

You are scored against the tie score, which is the total divided by the seats: 105, 80 or 70. Finish a four-seat deal with the ace of clubs, a red ace, a red king, a red six and a red five, plus whatever black cards came along, and you have 81. That is 11 over the tie score of 70, so the deal is worth plus 11 to you. The same five cards at two seats score 41, because the ace of clubs is worth nothing there, and that deal costs you 64. The margins at a table always add up to nothing.

Where the rules pages disagree, and where we land

The pages agree on the capture and the scoring, then split. Who starts: McLeod's Taiwan variant has the dealer start, Cats at Cards has the seat after the dealer, and so do we, every deal. Who wins: Cats at Cards and gamerules treat the tie score as a target to reach, McLeod scores the difference, and so do we, added up over a match the host sets, a deal for each seat or two for each. The highest total wins, and a tie for first is shared, not played off.

Capturing is compulsory here: a card that can capture does, and nobody may decline. The pages imply it more than say it, and in a simulation of random deals where each capture could be declined half the time, nearly every deal ended with cards stuck in the layout. We leave out the Taiwan bonus for taking both red fives in one play, the Thai version where black cards score, and Barraco's red aces at ten. There is no betting. The points are only points.

At the table: friends by link, or one to three computers

Open a table, pick two, three or four seats and how long the match is, and send each person a link. Whoever opens a link takes that seat: no account, nothing to download. If a tab closes on you, the menu page keeps a list of your open tables and you click back into your seat. A table waits 48 hours.

You see your own hand and nobody else's, and the order of the stock never reaches anyone. A pile is only a number until the deal is counted, then the count lists the scoring cards in every pile, though each capture is announced as it happens, so you can keep count if you care to.

The board says whose turn it is, what the last turn did, how many cards each seat has won, and each seat's margin so far. When a card in your hand is not on offer it says why: it is not your turn, or you have a take to choose first. Seats are labelled the host, guest 1 and so on, and chat is on.

Nobody to send a link to? Press Play the computer and choose one, two or three computers. The choice is remembered on this device, and you lead the first deal. Each computer works from what is on the table plus its own hand, and never reads another hand or the stock. It adds its own points to the points of the card it would take and plays the biggest total. With nothing to take it lays down the cheapest card it can: a zero-point one whose partners have all been seen, if there is one. It steers clear of laying down a card that scores, a red ace or a red nine to king, while somebody could still pair it, unless nothing cheaper is left in its hand. It does not plan ahead, and it remembers every card that has gone by. Pause stops the computers while you read the board. There is a high contrast switch too.

One piece of advice, ours and not McLeod's

Our view: the game is decided by what you leave lying in the layout. A card that cannot capture joins it, and the next seat, or the next card off the stock, can take it. So with nothing to take, lay down a black card from two to eight, which is worth nothing anywhere, and keep your aces. A red ace is safe to lay once all four nines have gone by or are in your own hand, and you can count them if you keep watch, because every capture is announced as it happens. The rules are short, which is the kind of game we like for friends: nobody starts with an unfair advantage.

You will find an app for it if you look. Here it is a page, free, and you might meet an ad once in a while; we are aiming for discreet. A computer match is not saved: close the tab and it is gone.