How to play Chinese Ten

The deal and the initial layout

One standard deck, no jokers. Each player is dealt a hand by the number of seats: 12 cards at two seats, 8 at three and 6 at four. Then four cards go face up in the middle as the initial layout. The other 24 cards stay face down as the stock. The seat after the dealer is the one to start, next in turn order, and the deal moves one seat on after every hand.

One rule for the layout at the deal: fives, tens, jacks, queens and kings can only be captured by their own rank, so three of a kind would strand cards. 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 captures them before anybody plays and the deal starts with an empty table.

Chinese Ten card game rules: what captures what

Cards make ten. An ace captures a nine, a two an eight, a three a seven, a four a six. A five captures a five. A ten, jack, queen or king captures the same rank and nothing else. Suit never matters. A card captures one card from the layout: you cannot add two layout cards together and take both, and the opening rule above is the one exception. Capturing is compulsory, so a card that can capture does.

Say the layout holds a king and a four. Play a six and it captures the four, since six and four make ten, and both cards go face down into your pile. A king from your hand captures the king. A queen captures nothing and joins the layout, which is how the layout grows.

Say the layout holds a red three and a black three, and you play a seven. It can capture either. You choose, and the table asks you only when the two are worth different points, as these are: the red three scores, the black one does not.

A turn

A turn is two cards. First play one card from your hand. Any card may be played, so every turn you choose which one: a card that captures, or one you can spare. If the card you play can capture a layout card it must, and if it cannot, it stays in the layout face up.

Then turn the top card of the stock. It captures if it can, and if not it joins the layout. The next seat goes. At the end of the deal every hand and the stock are empty together, and the last card turned captures the last card in the layout, which is what the rule for three and four of a kind protects.

Scoring

Only the cards in your pile count, and mostly the red ones. Red two to eight are worth their face value, red nine to king 10 points each, red aces 20 points each. Black cards score nothing, except the two black aces. The ace of spades is worth 30 points at three or four seats and nothing at two. The ace of clubs is worth 40 points at four seats and nothing at two or three.

That is why the total grows as seats are added: all the points in the deck are 210 at two seats, 240 at three and 280 at four, and at four seats the four aces carry 110 of them. The tie score is the total divided by the seats: 105, 80 or 70. Your result for a deal is your points minus the tie score, so ten over is plus ten. The results of all the seats at a table add up to zero every deal.

What the table tells you

The table says whose turn it is, what the last turns did, how many cards each seat has captured, and each seat’s margin so far. It also says why a card in your hand cannot be played right now: it is not your turn, or you owe a choice between captures first. Piles show as counts until the end of the deal, then the count lists the scoring cards in every pile.

How a match ends

The host picks the length: a deal for each seat, or two for each, and at the computer table you pick it yourself. Between deals every seat presses next deal, and the dealer moves one seat on. The highest total margin wins, and a tie for first is a shared win. The rules are John McLeod’s, from his Pagat page, and where the pages disagree the menu page says which way we went.