The following is my first podcast in what I hope will become a series dedicated to playing Magic The Gathering. In this first episode I focus on basic play as well as some beginner’s strategies. I hope you will find it informative. Obviously it goes without saying that intermediate or advanced players will reap little benefit due to the basic nature of the content, but I hope to remedy that in future episodes.
Bella Donna and Bella Donna Halliela are games which I grew up playing in Malta. Bella Donna was a very popular Sunday afternoon card game and one which I continued to play through the years. In the video blog below I am offering a tutorial with a live demonstration of how the game is played including scoring. As you will see in the video, this game is usually played towards a target score. There is no set rule for what this target score might be, however I would suggest playing to either 100, 150 or 200 points depending your time constraints.
Open Face Chinese Poker is growing in popularity around the world, it is derived from Chinese Poker but all cards are dealt face up and not all at once. Both Open Face Chinese and Chinese Poker employ standard Poker hand rankings. One feature of both Open Face Chinese and Chinese Poker is that 13 cards are dealt out to each player. Additionally, you also have to form three hands of increasing rank from front to back, of 5,5 and 3 cards.
OFC-10 (10-card Open Face Chinese) is a variation where players are dealt 10 cards instead of 13 and they are invited to make two, 5-card poker hands. While OFC-10 employs most of the terminology employed in standard OFC, including royalties, it however encompasses a number of adjustment that were obligatory given that only two, 5-card hands are tabled.
I would like to invite you to follow the link at the bottom of this blog entry and review the complete rules for OFC-10, should you wish to distribute I would appreciate an acknowledgement. Also if you do play this variation I would be interested to hear from you regarding your experiences with the game.
Now let’s go back to 13-card Open Face Chinese poker.
The game is really fun to play and very addictive, there isn’t any actual betting involved, but players score points for various hand combinations. Online gambling variations associate 1 point scored with a value, say 1 point equals $1 or 1 point equals $5. Still this game is not about bluffing since everyone sees the cards as they come out. To win, or at least play decently, you need to have keen observation skills and a modicum of familiarity with basic probability to quickly assess your chances of, for instance, completing a full-house on the back hand.
Luck plays a significant role in this game, since the cards peeled of the top of the deck will tend to dictate the strength of your final hand. Still a player must remain attentive not to unwittingly put himself in an unsavory corner, or play cards in such a way as to end up with a foul hand.
Here are two examples of OFC hands, the one on the left is a valid hand, the one on the right is a “foul” hand and would lose automatically.
| Example A – Valid OFC Hand | | Example B – A “Foul” hand | |||||||||
| FRNT | 2s | 2h | Kd | - | - | | Ad | Ah | 9s | - | - |
| MIDD | 9d | 9c | 5h | 6h | 7h | | Qh | Qs | 2d | 6s | 8c |
| BACK | 10c | Jd | Qd | Kh | As | | 4c | 4d | Jh | Js | 3s |
Let us consider Example “A” above. The player has an Ace-high straight on the Back hand, which is his highest hand. The middle hand shows a pair of nines and the Front hand a pair of twos. Since the strenght of the hands decreases back to front, this is a valid OFC hand. In Example “B”, the player has made two pair on the Back hand, a pair of Queens on his Middle hand but a pair of Aces on this Front hand. Since the Front hand is effectively higher than the Middle hand, this renders the overall hand invalid and hence a “foul” hand.
Some possible gaming consideration
Building a winning hand depends on a number of factors, obviously the stronger your Back hand the higher are you chances of winning. Yet it is more important to ensure that you end up with an overall valid hand first and foremost.
Placing your initial 5 cards on your final layout is also an important aspect of any OFC poker hand. In fact laying those cards will inevitably impact the way you will build your 13 cards into a valid OFC hand.
Starting with 4 cards in one suit, or 4 cards to an up and down straight.
Before evaluating your hand, it may be a good idea for you to keep an eye open for cards that might effect you among the 5 cards tabled by your other opponents. As in other forms of poker, the player who lays his cards last on his spread will be in a better situation to decide what hand he can or cannot complete.
If on receiving your 5 cards you realize that you have four cards in one suit, and none of your opponents has any similar suited cards in their layout, then you should aim for a flush on your Back Hand. Likewise if you realize that you are dealt 4 cards to a straight, and none of the cards you need are in the layouts tabled by your opponents, then you should aim to complete a straight on your Back Hand.
| Front | Points | Middle | Points | Back | Points |
| 66 | 1 | Three of a kind | 2 | Straight | 2 |
| 77 | 2 | Straight | 4 | Flush | 4 |
| 88 | 3 | Flush | 8 | Full house | 6 |
| 99 | 4 | Full house | 12 | Four of a kind | 10 |
| TT | 5 | Four of a kind | 20 | Straight flush | 15 |
| JJ | 6 | Straight flush | 30 | Royal flush | 25 |
| QQ | 7 | Royal flush | 50 | ||
| KK | 8 | ||||
| AA | 9 | ||||
| Trips | 20 |
Table 1 - Royalties in Open Face Chinese Poker
That’s just about all I have to say about this variation for now, please feel free to click on the link below to try out my 10-card OFC variation. Feedback as stated earlier would be most appreciated.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
As I had indicated a while back, Mahjong is as varied as the cultures which play it consistently. For a while I have played the British Variation, with some minor modifications. As a neophyte, I tried to review the various rule-sets I could get my hands on and in the process come up with a variation that was at one time both simple to learn as well as strategically fulfilling. My first forays into creating the ultimate, simple variation gave rise to a simplified form which borrowed elements of the Japanese Riichi Mahjong as well as the British rules. It worked, but I kept getting complaints that it was too simplified or not as challenging.
Then there was another aspect that kept nagging me, the fact that I had not managed to find a single guidebook that focused on the strategy aspect. That thankfully changed in recent months when I obtained a copy of “A Mahjong Handbook” by Eleonor Noss Whitney. It starts off by covering the basics, the tiles, the seating around the table, breaking the wall, basically how to go about playing. Then it covers a variation it calls the “Modern variation”. Nothing particular here other than that it focuses on the notion of patterns which earn you doubles over and above a base score for a winning hand. This was all stuff I already knew and experimented with during my early games. The section that really caught my attention however covered both an offensive and a defensive strategy for playing the game. It was while reading this section that I realised for the first time just how important Chows, or sequences of three tiles, really were for a comprehensive strategy.
If you haven’t already, please go back and review my other Mahjong blog entry by clicking here.
You see in my experience of British Mahjong, Chows make sense only within the context of complex hands that are indeed very difficult to put together. An All Chow hand earns you a minimum point score and single Chows hold no value whatsoever. Yet in other scoring systems Chows can be used intelligently both to block opponents from winning in situations where you cannot win, as well as construct hands that garner points by containing mix scoring patterns.
In all the variations I have seen so far, actual play varies little, it is usually the scoring method employed that does while also requiring adjustments to hand building. So before reviewing the two variations mentioned in the title, allow me to go over a few gaming principles and hand-building strategies.
In most Mahjong variations, the objective is to put together a hand of exactly 14 tiles composed of four sets of three tiles and a pair. There are three types of sets you can put together, sequences (Chow), trips (Pung) and quads (Kong). For the purpose of determining a valid winning hand, Kongs are looked upon as though they were sets of three tiles (Pung). Now there are four copies of each tile in a Mahjong set, so you will find four One’s of Bamboos, four Eights of Characters, four Red Dragon tiles so on and so forth. From this you will therefore appreciate that sequences should be easier to assemble than Pungs or Kongs. It also follows that any pattern that relies on assembling Pungs or Kongs will be harder to put together than those which focus on Chows.
Yet your strategy cannot focus on assembling just Chow-based patterns, basically because in all the point scoring systems I have encountered, the higher scores are weighted significantly in favour of assembling Pung and Kong-based patterns. So what should be your plan of action?
Mahjong is no different to other pattern-based games; Gin Rummy comes to mind here. For this reason, your likelihood of winning a hand will depend to an extent on the strength of your starting hand. Eleonor Noss Whitney states that if you notice that you have a hand requiring more than 5 tiles to complete, then your chances of winning are poor, and you should focus on minimizing damages by not offering the winning tile by discarding undesirable tiles without proper foresight. If on the other hand you have an initial hand that requires 5 or fewer tiles to attain a ready hand (one tile left to win) then you can really focus your strategy on maximizing your score.
The guidelines offered are simple yet effective. If you find yourself holding on to middling sequenced pairs such as 4-5 or 6-7, you should hang on to them in the hope of making Chows with tiles on either side of these pairs. If you have something like 5-6-7-7 then her recommendations are more in favour of forming concealed hands if possible and to stay away from forming exposed Pungs, unless it would mean going out and declaring a winning hand or making a ready hand. Personally I find it difficult to simply pass on forming a melded exposed Pung by claiming a discard, just to focus on achieving a fully concealed hand, but I see the merits of her thinking.
Another aspect found in the book A Mahjong Handbook is the ability to assess how a player plays his hands. Some players develop tendencies toward forming suited hands, or maybe honour tile based hands, this in itself would suggest a counter-strategy based on retaining crucial tiles he might need till the very last minute, or until such time that you cannot hold on them without impacting your chances of winning. The book is also clearly against giving out any information regarding the current strength of your hand such as physically separating your completed sets such as to reveal your current hand situation to your opponents. Some may argue that, okay your opponents know you have a set but that they still do not know what you are holding. That may be true but the fact is that by revealing for example that you have completed three out of the four necessary sets, an opponent may decide to change his strategy in order to attain an early (albeit lower scoring) win just to block you from winning the hand.
There’s more to the aforementioned book than what I have mentioned so far, but now I would like to focus on the two Mahjong variations I was referring to earlier.
MCR
MCR stands for Mahjong Competition Rules. It’s a format used during tournaments in Asia and stands in direct competition with the Japanese Riichi Mahjong rules which are also employed during tournaments in the Far East. MCR does away with some of the more intricate scoring methods employed in traditional Mahjong. Points are scored for patterns identified within a winning hand. There is no doubling in the MCR scoring system; you only get points associated with the patterns you succeed in putting together through your winning hand. You may have multiple patterns scored so long as neither of them overlaps significantly. If two related patterns can be observed within a winning hand, then the higher scoring pattern prevails over the other. Additionally, as happens in Riichi Mahjong, only the winner receives any points.
In my opinion the only really shortfall with MCR Mahjong are the 81 distinct patterns you need to memorize in order to plan your strategy. With repeat play you will arrive to remembering most if not all of them, but you will always need a discrete reference sheet for those that you will find difficulty committing to memory.
WSOM
WSOM stands for World Series of Mahjong. This tournament has been held annually since 2007. This year it was supposed to be hosted in Sydney as opposed to Macau, but the late announcement of the new venue (March) did not allow most players time to make the necessary preparation to attend for this year’s event. This resulted in the tournament being cancelled. We will have to wait till next year for the next WSOM. The rule-set used for this competition is adapted from the pattern-based Zung-Jung variation designed by Alan Kwoon. The WSOM rule-set is seen to borrow favourably from some of the more popular variations like Riichi. As in MCR only the winner gets any points. Discards are also orderly arranged into rows of 6 (left to right) within the wall as happens in Riichi. Flower and Season tiles are not used. Scoring, as for the MCR variation, is pattern-based and your winning hand may score multiple patterns. Unlike Riichi or other Mahjong variations, there is no doubling of scores in the WSOM rules. A winning player will always receive three times the value of his winning hand. If he wins on a discard and his hand score exceeds 30 points, than the person responsible for his win will have to pay the total points owed to the winner less 60 points. These residual 60 points are then paid off in equal parts by the remaining two players. Everyone pays in the case of a self-drawn winning hand, so each of the remaining three players will pay exactly one-third of the total points due to the winner.
That in essence is what WSOM rules are all about. Additionally another favourable aspect of this rule-set is that you only need to get familiar with 44 patterns, and they are not that difficult to remember either. Obviously during your early game it would be a good idea to keep a list of scores for easy reference.
I’d like to conclude this blog by offering you a few links you will find useful should you wish to get down to playing this incredible game.
For those familiar with Poker terminology the title will immediately ring a bell. Heads-up play is one-on-one play, a focused dual of wits unlike no other. Uno tends to lend itself brilliantly to multiplayer gaming and the game is a tonne of fun when played in largish (6-8 person) groups. Yet this same game changes dramatically when two players duke it out one-on-one.
To begin with, even a minor deterioration in the quality of the decisions taken will have longer lasting repercussions on the flow of a hand. Additionally the importance of special cards you are dealt, say the Skip cards or Reverse cards, also changes depending on the game plan you weave as play progresses.
You must also be careful in as to what rules you choose to adhere to before engaging in a heads-up match. For instance let’s say you decide to opt for accumulative penalties, this will severely impact the flow of a hand and game. In standard penalty application, when a player plays a valid +2 card or a +4 card, his opponent must take the ascribed number of cards from the deck and lose his turn to play. If accumulative penalties are used, then if say Player 1 plays a +2 card and Player 2 plays back with another +2 card, then it’s Player 1 who must now pick four cards from the deck. You will understand that this method of allowing penalties to accumulate if possible, can have disastrous effects such as for instance two +4 cards played in succession with the first player having to take an eight card penalty from the deck.
There are also other dynamics in heads-up Uno play that play out differently to multiplayer scenarios. For instance if I use a Skip or Reverse card in a three or more-handed game, the effect of these wild cards is diluted in the sense that the Player playing these cards can only hypothetically enjoy a delayed effect or benefit. If on the other hand these same cards are played heads-up, suddenly what this means is that I can play a string of connected wild cards reducing my own stack rapidly. This happens because playing either a Reverse or Skip card has the immediate effect of returning control of a hand back to me.
As with 3 or more-handed games, playing your larger cards first and your smaller cards later is still the way to go. Your aim should always be to reduce your point score to the barest minimum to avoid getting caught with your pants down at the end of a rather difficult hand.
Wherever possible, you should also try to determine what a player might potentially be holding on to. Through actual play, you will at times notice that a player while successfully reducing his score is still blocked whenever the hand changes to Green for instance. So what you should deduce is that this player must not have any Green cards in his hands. The best strategy therefore would be to favour Green in order to reduce your own hand points while forcing your opponent to skip turns while picking cards from the deck. If doing so is not possible and you feel that there is no way to win a hand, then your backup strategy should always be to reduce the number of points in your hands to an absolute minimum. So in this latter scenario, get rid of all your wild cards first and then follow through with the larger cards.
Attention to detail is king in Uno, it is not only a matter of observing what cards are being piled up on the discard pile but also what cards you are pulling off the top of the deck when it’s your turn to play. If say a lot of reds have been played early in a hand and now it feels as though I’m peeling only greens and blues from the top of the deck, then it would stand to reason that any red (albeit rare) cards I might acquire will hold a strong blocking potential and should be used selectively. While forcing a player to pick a card rather than play a card is a desirable outcome to any strategy employed, having an opponent pick too many cards rather than playing to the discard pile should send alarm bells ringing in your head.
The reason is a simple one; let’s say that you haven’t seen too many wild cards, +4 or +2 cards being played to the table. Let us also imagine that your deck is rapidly dwindling and your prospects of winning look healthy. However let us throw a wrench in to the works by saying that your opponent has been picking cards from the deck for the past 5 rounds. As you approach the three-card mark in your hands, you play a red card knowing your opponent has apparently not picked up any viable reds. Then your opponent seeing your hand go down to just two cards, drops a bomb on you by playing a +4 he has picked from the deck, in the process he switches play to yellow. You have no reply to his switch to yellow, and guess what now you’re the one picking cards rather than playing them to the deck.
What this example highlights is that to win, you really should be trying to stall your opponent cautiously while keeping an eye on what cards have been played up to that point. It all boils down to at least trying to recall key cards played to the deck as well as what colours have so far dominated play. Some gifted folk might even try recalling entire sequences of discarded cards, which while commendable is not essential for Uno. Recalling for instance that it was mostly blue cards up to now is already a good indicator of what other colours are more likely to be played in near-future rounds. It also pays to keep track of any zero cards played (since you only have 4 in a deck) as well as of any special cards in particular +2 and +4 cards.
When a hand becomes blocked, and it will on occasions, game play will also experience an interesting transition towards one focused on the luck of the draw. Let’s say that the last up-card at the top of the discard pile is blue and let’s assume that up to that point a good two-thirds of all possible blue cards have been played. Let us now also assume that neither player in the heads-up dual hold any blue cards. Worse still the up-card is a Blue Zero. Since there are only 4 Zero cards in the entire deck, you will appreciate that only a Wild card or a +4 or any other of the remaining (hopefully still not played) Zero cards can unblock this situation. When this happens both players will end up picking card after card from the remaining stockpile, accumulating sizeable hands before either would be in a position to unblock the situation. In these cases the first player lucky enough to pick any one of the aforementioned block buster cards, will also be the player who will stand a greater chance of winning that particular hand.
In conclusion, if you are intrigued by two-player card games, Heads-up Uno will be something you will most likely enjoy. However before signing off, I would like to suggest a few guidelines that might tailor your playing experience in line with your own preferred playing style. More importantly you should ascertain that both you and your opponent are fully aware of the rules you will be observing.
Option A – Dare Devil Uno.
Option B – Standard Heads-up Uno.
Some additional rule guidelines for Heads-up Uno:-
