Dou Di Zhu is a card game that is mostly played by three players but can also accommodate four players. In every hand one player will play as the ‘landlord’. The remaining players form a team to play against the landlord.
The landlord will win if he can use all his cards in valid combinations before his opponents.
The team wins if just one of the players uses all his cards before the landlord.
This game requires a pack of 54 cards (including the two jokers). The card ranking is:
In the game of Dou Di Zhu suits are irrelevant.
Each player is given 17 cards and the remaining three cards are left face down until the auction is complete.
The player to be the landlord is decided during the auction. The first player to have been dealt to will be the first to bid. The bidders have a choice as to whether they bid or pass. If all players pass there has to be a new deal. There are three levels of bid, 1, 2 and 3 and bidding continues until either the bidding reaches 3 or two players pass after a bid. The highest bidder becomes the landlord. The landlord will then pick up the last three cards so that he now has 20 cards.
The first to play is the landlord. The landlord can use a single card or play any of the recognised combinations. Play then moves anti clockwise where each player will have to beat the previous combination with the same number and type of cards or pass if they are unable to do that.
This has two exceptions:
The game continues until two players in a row have to pass. When this occurs the cards that have been played are turned over to be face down and moved aside. Play starts again with the player who made the last combination.
There are thirteen different combinations in the game of Dou Di Zhu:
If the landlord gets rid of all his cards first he wins and the rest of the players pay him the amount he originally bid, either one, two or three units. This is if no bomb or rocket was used. If one of the other players gets rid of all his cards then landlord has to pay each of the other players his bid. If anyone uses a bomb or a rocket the amount that has to be paid doubles each time one is played.
This variation of the game uses two decks. 25 cards go to each player and eight remain in the middle for the landlord. The landlord faces three opponents in this game.
There are some differences with the combinations in a four player game.
The ‘pot’ is not doubled if a bomb is played consisting of five or less cards
Once the Landlord has been decided at auction it is he who gets us underway. A low ranking combination will most likely to be used at the start of the game so a single card (5) or a low pair (6-6) might be played.
The next player will have to better that so if responding to a single card may just go with another single (Jack) or if having to better the pair might go with 9-9, depending on what cards he is dealt.
The third player has to again better the previous hand and may have to move up to a triplet to do so, 6-6-6 would be a sensible move or something similar.
The play moves back to the Landlord and he may have lots of low ranking combinations but only one high ranking combination, which he would be forced to play at this instant, so that would be a sequence of triplets (333-555).
When the hands get this high it is not uncommon for the remaining two players to have to pass. If that is the case the played cards are moved to the side and the hand combinations go back to the beginning. The Landlord plays as he was last to make a combination and he will start low again, probably with a single card again as he has many low ranking combinations and doesn’t want to have to pass too soon.
In a game where there is one rocket or bomb played and the winning bid in the auction was just one, a winning Landlord will receive twice the original stake from each player (1x2) as a result of that bomb or rocket having doubled the pot. A losing Landlord will pay each player twice the original stake.