Four Color Cards
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| Origin | Chinese |
|---|---|
| Type | Matching |
| Players | 4 |
| Skills required | Memory, Counting |
| Cards | 112 |
| Deck | Chinese Chess Cards Set |
| Play | Anticlockwise |
| Playing time | 20 min. |
| Random chance | Easy |
| Related games | |
| Conquian | |
| Four Color Cards | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Chinese name | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chinese | 四色牌 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Vietnamese name | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Vietnamese | Tứ sắc/Bài | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Chữ Nôm | 四色/牌 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Transcriptions | |
|---|---|
| Standard Mandarin | |
| Hanyu Pinyin | sì sè pái |
| IPA | sɨ̂ sɤ̂ pʰǎɪ |
| Yue: Cantonese | |
| Yale Romanization | sei3 sik1 paai4 |
| IPA | sēi sɪ́k pʰa̬ːi |
| Jyutping | sei3 sik1 paai4 |
| Eastern Min | |
| Fuzhou BUC | sé-sáik-bà̤ |
| Pu-Xian Min | |
| Hinghwa BUC | si̍-seh |
Four Color Cards (Chinese: 四色牌; pinyin: Sì Sè Pái, for other names see the table), is a very popular game of the rummy family of card games, with a relatively long history in China. In Vietnam the equivalent game is known as Tứ sắc. Various companies are still manufacturing Four Color Cards. One of them is situated in Singapore.
The game seems to have derived from mahjong, go and xiangqi, where the names of the pieces are often used on the cards. The cards were typically used by the lower class to play gambling games, and were intended to be easy and cheap to make because, as gambling was illegal in China, there was a need for cards that could be disposed off easily. Also because of the Chinese revolution and lower class connections, written rules for the game are rarely found. Hence there can be many versions of the official rules depending on the region and the household.
A standard deck consists of 112 cards, divided into four colors, 28 cards each, depicting the seven Chinese chess pieces. In each color there are cards printed with each of the seven pieces of xiangqi, repeated four times each, like in mahjong.
The objective of this game is very similar to mahjong, which is to achieve a winning hand consisting of melds of the following arrangements. Each player has 25 cards in his hand at the start of the game, and a winning hand has 26 cards with a minimum of 20 points, and can go up to 42 points at maximum (almost impossible). Note that each winning hand has to have an odd number of points in the range from 19 to 41. Hence this can be a rough guide for players to check in case they are short of cards or have extra cards.
Typically, each deck can be played by 2 to 3 players. If there are more players, an extra card set is added for each additional player. For example, for 4 players, a deck (112 cards) and an extra card set (28 cards) is used.
For the first game, a dealer is chosen by an arbitrary method. A typical method is for everyone to draw randomly one card from a face down pile to compare ranks, with the highest rank being the dealer. For subsequent games, the winner of the previous game will be the dealer, and the player to the left of the winner will do the job of mixing the played cards to set up the draw pile.
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Wikipedia