Tichu

Partnership climbing card game -- object is rid yourself of your hand. The deck is a standard 52-card pack with four special cards added. When it's your turn, you may either beat the current top card combination or pass. If play passes all the way back to the player who laid the top cards, he wins the trick and can lead the next one. The card led determines the only combination of cards to be played on that trick. So if a single card is led, then only single cards are played. If a straight of seven cards is led, then only straights of seven cards, etc. The last player out gives all the cards he won to the player who exited first, and the last player's unplayed cards are handed to the opposite team. Fives, Tens and Kings are worth points, with each hand worth one hundred points (without bonuses). The first team to 1000 points wins.

History
Tichu was derived from a Chinese game called Zheng Shangyou, which can be translated as "struggling upstream". The Western world was made aware of it in 1979, during a visit to China by some British Go players.

There is a related Chinese game called Zheng Fen, which has point scoring cards identical to Tichu's. The 4 special cards in Tichu replace the 4 jokers in the Chinese game, in the Chinese game, the 4 jokers all play a role similar to the Dragon.

It appears Tichu designer Urs Hostettler took a number of concepts from several Chinese games and possibly added a few of his own to come up with Tichu. So he deserves credit for creating the game that we know and love.

Awards

• 2006 Nederlandse Spellenprijs nominee.

Online Play

• BrettspielWelt (real-time)
• Gravon (real-time; site mostly in German, java applet available in English))

Tichu Microbadges :

Important note: while the rules include variations to provide for 3, 5 or 6 players, fans of the game virtually unanimously believe it should only be played with exactly 4.