At the time of writing, Smith and Senst (1996) is the only printed article that describes Luk Fu in detail. Some cards of a Luk Fu deck feature the spade, heart and diamond symbols that are seen in French and English playing cards, and the game has a calling phase that is reminiscent of (albeit much simpler than) the bidding phase in contract bridge.Īlthough there are mentions of Luk Fu in some 19th century literature, Luk Fu had only oral rules until recently. Yet Luk Fu has also some western touches. It resembles the ancient game Ma Tiu more closely than Mahjong does, and is the only contemporary Chinese card game that retains all four suits of Ma Tiu as well as some features of another ancient game Khanhoo. We also highly recommend combining two decks of cards to make counting cards more challenging.Luk Fu (六虎 or 'Six Tigers') is a trick-taking card game that is played predominantly by today's Hakka Chinese. Don’t believe us? Try it out for yourself, we warned you.

Sounds like a simple game to win money? Wrong! More often than not, this game goes against all odds. The game can either end or every player can chip in again to begin a new round. The game carries on until the pot is completely depleted. Once the player has taken from or added to the pot, the person on the left has a turn. If the third card happens to be the same as either of the first two dealt, then double of the said bet is added into the pot instead. If not, said amount will be added to the pot – making it grow bigger for the next player.īe cautious before shouting “whole pot!” if you get dealt a lucky pair, like an ace and a king. If the value of the third card is in-between the first two cards, then the player may retrieve the amount s/he betted from the pot. The player is allowed to bet as much as the total amount of money in the pot. An ace card has the smallest value (1) and a king has the largest (13). The player now has to decide if the next card will have a value that's in-between the two cards.

Deal two cards facing up to the player on the dealer's left. The pot becomes the maximum sum a person can bet each turn. Every player chips in the same sum of money to the pot.

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