Family Game Night- Chinese Ten

Sometimes having no money can really be boring. I try to not let that happen too much though. My husband and I have family game nights. I just discovered the game Chinese Ten and it is awesome! Here is how you play Chinese Ten.

If you are looking for a Disney themed game to play, check out my Top Disney Games for Families.

Usually, we play rummy, but we have decided to try learning new games to make it more interesting. I found this website called Pagat. I went on there and looked for 2 player games and found a LONG list of card games to play. Some games were pretty complicated, so I passed them over. My husband and I picked Chinese Ten and absolutely love the game.

Chinese Ten

The game is played with a standard 52-card deck. The number of cards dealt to players varies depending on how many are playing. For a game with two players, each player gets twelve cards. For a game with three players, each player gets eight cards. For a game with four players, each player gets six cards. It is easy to remember how many get dealt to each player by simply dividing 24 by the number of people who are playing (i.e. 24 divided by 2 = 12, each player gets 12 cards).

After all the cards have been dealt, four cards are turned over face-up from the remaining deck and placed in a layout like this (it doesn’t have to look like this, but you need to start out with four cards from the stockpile face up).

The object of the play is to capture cards from the layout. A numeral card from Ace (1) to Nine captures another numeral card if their values add up to exactly ten – so, for example, Ace captures Nine, Nine captures Ace, Three captures Seven, a Five captures another Five, and so on. Tens and picture cards can only capture another card of the same rank: Ten captures Ten, Queen captures Queen, and so on. Suits don’t matter for the purpose of capturing.

At your turn you must play one card from your hand. If it captures a card from the layout, you take both cards and place them face down in front of you in your pile of won cards; if not you leave it face up as a new layout card. Whether you captured or not, you next flip the top card of the face down deck face up. If this captures a card from the layout you take both cards; if not it remains in the layout. After you have played one card and flipped one card, whether you captured or not, the turn passes to the next player.

Although the layout always begins with four cards, during the game there may often be more or fewer than four cards in the layout.

Special cases

If the initial layout contains three kings, three queens, three jacks, three tens or three fives, then the fourth card of that rank captures all three matching cards.

If the initial layout consists of four kings, four queens, four jacks, four tens or four fives, then the dealer automatically captures the four of a kind.

These two rules are necessary to avoid having cards in the layout that can never be captured.

Now my husband played this a few times without keeping score. At the end of the game there should be no cards leftover and everything should be matched. We kept on forgetting to play a card from our hand if we couldn’t capture something or we would forget to draw a card from the stockpile. After a few times of having no cards left over we started keeping score which makes the game VERY interesting.

At the end of the game, each player should have a stack of cards next to him. When there are two players, only the red cards have a value; when there are three players, the Ace of spades also scores; when there are four players the red cards and both black Aces score. Black cards other than Aces are always worthless.

The point values of the cards are as follows:

Red 2-8= Face value

Red 9, 10, J, Q, K= 10 points each

Red Ace= 20 points

Black Ace of Spades= 30 points (if three or more are playing)

Black Ace of Clubs= 40 points (if 4 players)

My husband and I had a blast playing this game!! You should definitely try it out if your games nights are getting boring.

What are some of your favorite card games?

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