Tichu has the players shuffle a deck of 56 cards. Then distributes eight cards to each player. After it distributes the cards, each player can choose to either call Grand tichu, or not. Either way they will then receive six other cards.
Players should only have 14 cards at maximum per round the round should end after three players have gotten rid of the rest of their cards. Players compete to capture points and to leave the round.
There are 100 points capturable in a round and 1000 points to win a game with the exception that if both teams reach a thousand points the team that has more wins. There are four special cards outside of the regular cards in a 52 card deck which means there are 56 cards in total. In each round there are eight main formats.
Three out of these eight formats have sub-formats. Those being:
- consecutive,
- flushes,
- and straight flushes.
All the formats considered together are:
- singles,
- doubles,
- triples,
- quadruples,
- consecutive pairs,
- consecutive triples,
- flushes with five,
- flushes with six and so on,
- straight flushes,
- and full houses.
The general rule is that whatever format the the hand started on is the one in which it must be played in going forward. There is one exception and that exception is if a bomb is played. Whatever bomb is played is then the format of the hand going forward and the format can only be changed if a bomb of a higher rank is played.
NOTE: It is traditional to say "points on the table!" if there is a card played worth points during a hand. This is worth no points but it is polite and righteous thing to do in a game.
The cards worth points are as follows five is worth 5 Points 10 is worth 10 points King is also worth 10 points and the dragon is worth plus 25 points and the Phoenix is worth -25 points. The dragon must be given to one's opponent when played in a hand you can choose which which player of your opponents it goes to.
If both players on a team win a round by going out first they gain 100 points for winning that round plus a bonus 100 points. If a player calls tichu, they win 100 points if they go out first and lose 100 if they don't. Grand tichu is worth double in both a loss and gain. Tichu must be called before the player plays any cards in a round. Players must trade three cards before the start of each round.
NOTE: After losing a game it is traditional to flip the table and be a sore loser the more a sore loser you are the better! 😅