Quick Jump

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• Chinese poker is an exciting type of poker based on making familiar combinations.Chinese open face poker is classically played as a two- to the four-person game. There are more than a dozen types of Chinese poker, the most popular of which in the Russian-speaking environment is Chinese pineapple poker.

OFC is built on traditional Chinese Poker. In traditional Chinese poker, each player is dealt 13 cards. You then organize the cards into 3 poker hands: Two 5-card hands, and one 3-card hand. The 3-card hand is placed on the table above (or in front of) one of the 5-card hands, which is placed above the other 5-card hand.

• 2 The Scoring System

The product of modern players’ desire to gamble for high stakes without having to grind for hours and hours, Open Face Chinese (OFC) Poker is basically an offshoot of Chinese Poker. It’s experiencing a boom in popularity in the USA in recent years. Following the same mechanical structure as Chinese Poker, but adding a few twists and turns to create an extra layer of skill, this game is now one of the most popular amongst professional players.

Although usually played as a side game for points (which are then converted in a cash amount), OFC’s recent surge in popularity has led to it being introduced in a tournament format both live and online in America.

The Basics of Open Face Chinese

So how exactly do you play Open Face Chinese?

At the start of each game the players involved are all dealt 13 cards each. After this initial deal no more cards are taken from the deck and it’s the player’s job to then make three hands: a back hand (five cards), a middle hand (five cards) and a top hand (three cards). To add an element of skill and forethought to the game, the strength of these hands must be descending, i.e. your strongest hand must be in the back and your weakest hand at the top.

The main difference with OFC compared to Chinese Poker is that instead of receiving all 13 cards face down at once, a round starts with players getting five cards face up.

At this point the player to the left of the dealer is then asked to arrange their opening fives cards. The cards can be placed in any position the player chooses: for example, two up top, two in the middle and one in the back hand. Once the first player has set their hand, the rest of the table are then free to set their hands in a clockwise order.

After setting their first five cards, each player is then dealt one card face up until everyone has received a total of 13 cards. As these cards are being dealt each player is free to put them in either their middle hand or their top hand and once the deal is complete all hands must be set.

After the deal is complete and each player’s hand is set, scoring for each of the three rounds takes place and the winner is the person with the highest score overall.

Five things You Need to Know about Open Face Chinese

1. OFC is played with a full deck and each player is dealt 13 cards.
2. The aim of the game is to set three hands: back (five cards), middle (five cards) and top (three cards). The strongest must always be at the back and the weakest at the top.
3. The winner of a round earns one point. On top of this, six points are given to a player if they scoop all three boards.
4. Bonus negative points can impact on a player’s score.
5. The winner is determined by the player with the most points at the end of the game.

The Scoring System

Before starting any OFC cash game, each player must agree on how much money a single point is worth. Once a figure has been agreed, players then assess who has the strongest hand on each street. The strength of a hand is based on traditional poker hand rankings as they evolved in the US and elsewhere.

The player who holds the strongest overall board (that is if they win two of the three hands) is awarded one game point plus any bonuses.

Generally you’ll find that a player might win one or two hands but not all three; however, if they do manage to beat every player in all three sets then it’s known as a “scoop” and they get 6 points. In addition to scoops, a player can also increase their winning score by hitting a Royalty Bonus. These extra points are awarded for the strength of a hand and add an extra element of skill to the game.

Because the size of each OFC board is different, royalty points are handed out for the following hands:

Open Face Chinese Poker – Top, Middle, and Back Hands

Hand Strength: Royalty Points

The final element to OFC’s scoring system is penalties. If at any point you set your hands incorrectly (i.e. your hands don’t decrease in strength from the back to the top) then you have a pay a foul of six points to your opponent.

Open Face Chinese Poker offers US poker players some very different challenges than they face with other types of card games.

Living in a Fantasy Land

One of the most interesting aspects of OFC that’s developed in recent years is the concept known as Fantasy Land. This part of the game is unlocked if a players holds QQ+ in their top hand. If a player achieves this state then their next 13 cards will be dealt to them facedown. This gives a Fantasy Land player a distinct advantage because they know all of their cards ahead of time and can, thus, set them accordingly. A stay in Fantasy Land can last indefinitely, providing the player makes quads or better in the back, a full house or better in the middle or trips up top.

Final Comments

Open Face Chinese might be a few years away from really establishing itself in the poker world in the United States, but with so many pros already enjoying its blend of skill and luck, there’s no doubt it’s a game on the up. While some will argue that it often favors the luckiest player, there’s still a lot of thinking to be done when setting hands. Moreover, the amount of money that can be made when playing for even moderate stakes is something that will certainly attract a lot of players.

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Poker pro Nikolai Yakovenko, co-creator of the ABC Open-Face Chinese Poker iPhone app, returns today to explain the rules of a new, popular variant of OFC, Open-Face Chinese Poker with 2-7 in the Middle.

Open-Face Chinese Poker with 2-7 in the Middle — a.k.a. “2-7 OFC” or “Deuce Pineapple” — is a turn-based card game that is played heads up, or sometimes three-handed. Players take turns, drawing cards and placing them into three separate poker hands. Each of these hands is played face up, meaning that players can see all of the cards that have been played, and these cards can’t be moved between each player’s three poker hands once they have been placed.

The “Deuce” designation means that the middle poker hand is played according to the rankings used in 2-7 lowball, while the other two hands are played as regular “high” poker hands.

The game might sound complicated, but it really isn’t. Deuce Pineapple is now available on the ABC Open-Face Chinese Poker app, for iPhone and iPad. You can practice against our computer AI, or challenge your friends to a turn-based match.

Later this week I’ll return with some discussion of strategy for 2-7 OFC, but today let’s focus on understanding the rules of the game.

Free Poker Solver

Three Hands: High, Low, High

The objective of 2-7 Open-Face Chinese is to place 13 cards into three hands: a five-card bottom hand, a five-card middle hand, and a three-card top hand.

As noted, the game plays just like high-only Pineapple OFC, except with the middle played as a 2-7 lowball hand. This means that your bottom hand is a regular five-card poker hand (with flushes, straight and full houses), the top hand is a three-card high hand (including pairs, trips, but no three-card straights or flushes), while the middle hand must contain five low cards with no pairs, no straights, and no flushes. The lower these cards the better.

Taking Turns and Discarding

The game is called Open-Face Chinese Poker (or OFC for short) because you’re building these three hands face up a few cards at a time.

As with all Open-Face games, you start by getting dealt five cards and place them all. On subsequent turns (following the procedure used in Pineapple OFC), you get three cards face down and place two of them in any of the available rows (bottom, middle or top). The unused card then gets discarded face down. Discards are out of play, and not shuffled back into the deck, and your opponents are not allowed to see your discards. Therefore there are only enough cards in a deck to play Deuce Pineapple OFC either heads-up or three-handed.

Fantasyland

If you make a qualifying hand with kings or better up top, or a wheel — — in the middle, then on the next hand you enter Fantasyland. Just like in high-only Pineapple OFC, in Fantasyland you get 14 cards right away and set 13 of them into three rows face down while discarding one. Your opponents then play out their hands normally, and the result is scored against your hand.

You can stay in Fantasyland, earning another round in this advantageous position, by making a big enough bonus. For Deuce Pineapple you need either trips (three of a kind) on top, a wheel low in the middle, or quads (four of a kind) or better on the bottom to remain in Fantasyland.

Open Face Chinese Poker Solver Games

15-Card Super Fantasyland

In a twist from high-only Pineapple OFC, you can also earn a 15-card “Super Fantasyland” round by qualifying for Fantasyland twice in the same normal hand. Here, for example, the player qualifies for Super Fantasyland by making both aces on top and a wheel in the middle.

This double-bonus is rare, but well worth it. If you stay in Fantasyland, “Super” or otherwise, you get a normal 14-card Fantasyland hand.

Qualification and Scoring

To make a qualifying hand, your top hand must be no better (as a normal poker hand) than your bottom hand. And your middle low hand must be at least a ten-low, meaning that your biggest card is no higher than a ten without a pair, a straight, or a flush. As with other Chinese Poker variants, a disqualified or “fouled” hand automatically loses every row.

The three rows are scored against your opponent with the winner of each row getting +1 point. If you win all three rows, this also results in a +3 scoop bonus. In addition to winning, scooping, and possible Fantasyland qualification, you also get points for any bonuses earned by a qualifying hand, even if that hand loses the row.

Bonuses for the bottom hand start with a straight, the low middle hand with a nine-low, and the top row with a pair of sixes. Full bonuses are listed here:

Sample Game

That’s a mouthful, but the game is actually quite simple. Even if you haven’t played a lot of 2-7 lowball before, that part of the game is very intuitive. Let’s fly through a quick round of 2-7 OFC, starting with the initial deal of five cards.

Once we’re dealt our first five cards, we place them. Here we’ll put the small ones into our middle low hand.

Next round, we get three cards.

We play two of them in the middle, locking up a seven-low. The is discarded, and is now out of play without the possibility of being returned to the deck.

On the next round, we play the up top, the on the bottom, and discard the .

Skipping ahead, on the last round we catch another ace. Since our bottom hand is three of a kind and thus a bigger hand than a pair of aces, we can play the ace up top for a nice bonus.

We win the top row with aces and the middle row with a seven-low, so we earn +13 in row bonuses. Our opponent wins the bottom row with a full house and earns +13 in bonuses. Thus after all of that, we win a single point.

However, making on top also takes us to Fantasyland. On the next round, we get 14 cards, and place any 13 of them into top, middle, and bottom.

It’s a pretty good hand, with bonuses for an eight-low in the middle, and a flush on the bottom.

We win three points overall, but our opponent makes a wheel in the middle, so on the next hand he will be in Fantasyland. And so it continues...

Later this week I’ll return to share some strategy considerations for Open-Face Chinese Poker with 2-7 in the Middle. Meanwhile, for more OFC strategy advice click here and follow me on Twittter at @ivan_bezdomny.

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  Nikolai YakovenkoOpen-Face Chinese Pokercash game strategyChinese Poker

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  Nikolai Yakovenko