How to Play Heaven-Nine Game

Author: Siu-ki Wong

Version: Draft 0.0.1

Heaven-Nine is a famous old Chinese domino type game. It requires four players to play this game. There are 32 tiles in a Heaven-Nine game board and each player will therefore have 8 tiles at the beginning of each game. Each player will take turn to play one to four tiles in each round. The player who won the last round will be the winner of the game. Details of the rules of this game will be discussed later. Let us first take a look of the tiles.

Heaven-Nine Game Tiles

The 32 tiles are divided into two groups: Scholars and Knights. Each tile has a Chinese name and I tried to translate them into English as close to its original meaning as possible. In fact, I don't know some of the meaning of the tiles and why they are called such names. I would be appreciated if someone can tell me and correct any errors I made.

There are 20 Scholar tiles with 10 different types, which means each type has 2 tiles:

Heaven Earth Human Goose Plum Long-Three Double-Two Axe-Head Red-Head Long-Leg-Seven Big-Head-Six

These tiles are called, namely, Heaven, Earth, Human, Goose, Plum, Long-Three, Double-Two, Axe-Head, Red-Head, Long-Leg-Seven, and Big-Head-Six. These tiles have already been arranged in order, which means Heaven is the strongest Scholar tile and the Big-Head-Six the weakest.

The 12 Knight tiles are shown below:

Nine Nine Eight Eight Seven Seven Five Five Fat-Chicken Thin-Chicken

The Knight tiles are named according to the number of dots, except the last two. Therefore, the first two tiles are called Nine. The rest are called Eight, Seven, and Five, respectively (note that there is no Six). So there are two different forms of each type. The last two tiles are called Fat-Chicken and Thin-Chicken respectively. The tiles are also arranged in order, but note that the tiles of the same type are of the same strength. So the two different forms of tiles are considered the same.

Rules of the Game

Each player takes turn to play tiles in each round, in anti-clockwise direction. The dealer plays first (any player who wins the game will become the dealer of the next game). The dealer can play any legal set of tiles and the other three players must follow the same type of set of tiles. If they cannot find the same type of set of tiles, or even if found the set of tiles cannot win, they must play with the same number of tiles concealed. The player who won this round will play first in the next round and the player who won the last round will win this game. Let us now see what is meant by a legal set of tiles. A legal set of tiles means the tiles of the same rank, no matter it is a Scholar or a Knight. Therefore, any combination of the two Heaven and the two Nine is a legal set of tiles. Note that if you play first, you must play the whole set of tiles, except the Heaven-Nine combination. However, the Fat-Chicken and Thin-Chicken cannot combine with the Scholar tiles to form a legal set, but they can form a pair of their own, which is called Supreme. We will discuss the Supreme in more details later. Therefore, the Heaven-Nine, Earth-Eight, Human-Seven, and Goose-Five are all combination of legal sets. The Scholar tiles below Plum form a pair of their own only.

For example, if you have

Goose Goose Five Five

Each tile itself is a legal set. Of course, the followings are all legal sets:

Goose Goose

Goose Five

Goose Goose Five

Goose Goose Five Five

Of course, if you play first, you must play all four tiles. Suppose now

Human Human Seven

are played by the dealer. The sets of tiles that can win are

Earch Earch Eight

Heaven Heaven Nine

Note that you must have two Scholar tiles and one Knight tile in the set. If you don't have these sets, then you must play any three tiles concealed, which means the tiles are played upside down so that other players do not know what tiles you have played. Moreover, if a Scholar tile or pair is played, you must play with a Scholar tile or pair. Same is applied to Knight tiles. For tiles of the same rank, the one one who play first will win. For example, if

Earth

is played, then you cannot play with Earth to win. You must play

Heaven .

Suppose now you will play first and you have the Supreme:

Thin-Chicken Fat-Chicken

then you can play this set and all other players must play two concealed tiles and pay you for the Supreme played. We will discuss how to score. Note that the Supreme only has the power when it is played first. There is no way for it to follow play.

If the last round is a one-tile game, which means only one tile to be played, you must have won at least one tile before to be legitimate to play this round. Otherwise you lose automatically, even if you have the tile to win this round.

How to Compute Score

The way to calculate the score is quite complicated in Heaven-Nine. Each player has a score of 200 (this can be changed of course, and also you may consider the number in terms of monetary unit) at the beginning of the game. Scores will be deducted from the loser and the winner will get all the scores. How much score will be deducted depends on who wins the game. If the dealer wins the game, the score will be multiplied by the number of times he or she wins in a roll. For example, if the dealer wins just once, the score will be multiplied by 2 (because this is the second game he or she wins). If the dealer has won two consecutive games, then the score will be multiplied by 3. Of course, if the dealer loses, then the score to be deducted will be multiplied by the same way.

Alright, let us see how to find the score. If you cannot win a tile, then the score is 5. If you have won more than a tile, then the score will be (4 - n), where n is the number of tiles you won. So if you have won 3 tiles, the score will be 1. Well, what if I won 5 tiles? Then you got a negative score of 1, which means scores will be added to your bank.

There are some special situations where the scores will be multiplied by a factor, which depends what type of tiles are played in the last round.

If Supreme is played in the last round, then the score will be doubled.
If a full set of tiles is played (i.e. all four tiles in a legal set), then the score will be multiplied by 4.
If the last round is won by the Thin-Chicken, and provided that the Fat-Chicken did not appear before, then the score will be multiplied by 3. However, if someone, who must be legitimate to play the last round of course, has the Fat-Chicken, then he will be winner even if other players have a stronger Knight tile. And even more, all scores will be deducted from the one who played the Thin-Chicken, instead of from the other players. This situation is called the Thin-Chicken is caught by the Fat-Chicken.
If one can win seven straight tiles, by default, all other players will lose this game. This is called Seven-Straight. The score will be multiplied by 3.
If one can win all eight tiles, which means the last round will consist of more than one tile, then the score will be multiplied by 4. This situation is called by Eight-Straight.

There are also some situations when scores are deducted immediately when some type of tiles are played (except in the last round):

When Supreme is played, a score of two (and adjusted according to the rule for dealer) will be deducted.
When a full set of tiles is played, a score of four (and adjusted according to the rule for dealer) will be deducted.

Now, let us see some examples below how the scores are computed. Suppose the four players are named East, South, West, and North, according to position they sit. Let us also suppose in each of the example that South is the dealer and has won 2 consecutive games already.

South won this game and East won 1 tile, West did not win any and North won 6 tiles. The adjustment of banks will be: South increased by 18, East decreased by 9, West decreased by 15, and North increased by 6.
East won this game, South won only 1 tile, West won 2 tiles and North cannot win any. The adjustment of banks will be: East increased by 16, South decreased by 9, West decreased by 2 and North decreased by 5.
East won this game with Supreme played at the last round, South won only 1 tile, West won 2 tiles and North cannot win any. The adjustment of banks will be: East increased by 32 , South decreased by 18, West decreased by 4 and North decreased by 10.
East played Thin-Chicken at the last round but was caught by West. In this game, East won 2 tiles, South won 3 tiles and North won 1 tile. The adjustment of banks will be: East decreased by 24 and West increased by 24. It is because East paid the scored for South and North.
North played Supreme in the middle of the game, the bank will be adjusted immediately: East decreased by 2, South decreased by 6, West decreased by 2 and North increased by 10.

Tips

Heaven-Nine is a little bit like Bridge, where the Scholars and Knights can be considered as different suits. So people who are familiar with bridge should find this game easy to play, though in this game you don't have a partner.
There are only 32 tiles and you are required to play the whole set of tiles when you play first, it is fairly easy to guess who holds what tiles.
Since the scores are multiplied incrementally, so if you are a dealer and has won several consecutive games, it will be wise to play the winning tile first, like Heaven or Nine. It is because there is a great difference in score between winning no tiles and winning just one tile.

_{Last Modified: February 20, 1996.}