Tien Gow variants
There are several Tien Gow variants. This page will list some simpler games, like Nau Tin Kau, Ancient Tiles and Tien Gow for two. Other more complicated games will have separate pages, which will be mentioned in the end.
Nau Tin Kau
Nau Tin Kau (扭天九) is a gambling game described by Culin and requires no skill at all, only an understanding of the suits and the hierarchy of the tiles. It can be considered a distant relative of Tien Gow, since this game also has tricks, only that players do not receive tiles in their hands, but draw them during the turn from the deck, which completely eliminates the element of skill.
The first player draws one tile from the deck and shows it. The second player does the same. If the second player has a tile of the same suit and is higher in the hierarchy, then he takes both tiles for himself and the turn passes to him. If not, then both tiles are taken by the first player and he continues playing first.
At the end of the game, the players count the red spots on their hands, and whoever has fewer of them pays the difference to the second player.
Source: Culin’s description
“Ancient tiles” variant
There is probably a 32-tile variant with no combinations at all, called Ancient Tiles (古牌, gupai). The source is a book in Portuguese about games played in Macau, but the author may have confused something. Since the words Ancient and Bone are homonyms in Chinese, the players were probably just playing GuPai (bone tiles), and the author thought they were talking about some “ancient tiles”. Since the author was confused in other places, I cannot claim that she has indicated everything correctly here.
Nevertheless, it is quite likely that one of the popular options is just such a game – Tien Gow with 32 tiles without combinations.
Tien Gow for two
If there are only two players, then they can play the Moving Mice option (老鼠恡家).
This is a game for two, with a set of 32 tiles. First, eight tiles are dealt to both players and the game is played according to the usual rules, then the rest of the tiles are dealt and played as usual. No calculation is done, simply tricks are taken.
After two such first rounds, each player takes 8 tiles from their tricks, starting with the oldest taken tricks, and the game continues. At some point, a player will have less than 8 tiles in tricks, then he takes them all and his opponent takes the same number. That is, if a player has only six tiles in his tricks, then he and his opponent take six tiles each and continue playing.
The one who remains without tricks loses.
This game was described to me in a letter by one Chinese, a lover of Chinese dominoes, Mr. Min FanXin (闵凡信). I’m not sure if this option is common, but I brought it up anyway.
This variant can be simplified even further by simply dealing 8 tiles for each player and then replenishing the hand from the talon after the trick is taken. This way all 32 tiles are played and it is played to 16 tricks
Other variants
Some Tien Gow variants require a longer description, so special pages are dedicated to them.
- Folk Tien Gow is a game with a reduced deck that is often played by the older generation.
- Mo Hua Hua is a paper domino game, but it helps to better understand the rules of the Folk Tien Gow, so I have listed its rules, especially since, unlike other paper domino games, it can be played with two sets of Chinese dominoes.
- Bagchen is the most complicated Tien Gow variant, which is played in Tibet. It is played with a double set of 64-tile dominoes.
If you want to delve deeper into the research of the Tien Gow game, I suggest you read about the Folk Tien Gow, and then about Mo Hua Hua.
If you want to skip these studies, but you are interested in the complexities – then go to the Bagchen page.
However if the Tien Gow rules you already know are enough for you, then skip all the previous rules and read about the only trick game that is not a direct version of the Tien Gow. This is a Japanese game called Deer Hunt.