Dou dizhu

Dou Di Zhu, (Chinese: 斗地主; pinyin: Doù Dìzhǔ; literally "Fight Landlord") is a card game in the genre of shedding and gambling. Dou Di Zhu is one of the most popular card games played in China. Dou Di Zhu is played with three people with onepack of cards, including the two jokers. The game starts with players bidding for the Cop (Chinese: 地主; pinyin: Dìzhǔ; literally "Landlord") position. Those who loose the bid enter the game as the Bandit (simplified Chinese: 农民; traditional Chinese: 農民; pinyin: Nóngmíng; literally "Peasant") team competing against the Cop. The game ends with whoever runs out of cards first.

Suits are unnecessary in playing Dou Di Zhu. Players can play the game fine with a set of Dou Di Zhu playing cards without the suits printed on the cards. Currently, there is no cards manufactured specifically for Dou Di Zhu, despite its popularity.

Less popular variations of the game do exist in China, such as four-player and five-player Dou Di Zhu played with two packs of cards.

Game play

A shuffled pack of 54 cards is dealt to three players. Each player is dealt 17 cards each, with the last three leftover wild cards detained on the playing desk unrevealed.

All players first review and appraise their own cards without showing them to the other players. Then, players take turns to bid for the Cop position by telling the other players the risk stake they are willing to accept.

There are three kinds of risk stakes, 1, 2, and 3, with 1 being the lowest and 3 being the highest. Generally, the more confident a player is in the strength of one's cards, the higher the risk stakes one is willing to bid. In most of the online game rooms, the first bidder is chosen randomly by the system. In reality, players usually make up their own rules as to who gets to bid first.

A player may accept the prior bidder's bid by passing their turn to bid or one may try to outbid the prior bidder as long as the prior bidder did not bet 3 as the risk stake. In other words, 1 can be outbidden by 2 or 3; 2 can only be outbidden by 3; and 3 cannot be outbidden.

The highest bidder takes the Cop position; and the rest enters the Bandit team competing against the Cop. The three leftover wild cards are revealed to all players before dealt to the Cop.

The Cop wins if he or she has no cards left. The Bandit team wins if either of the Bandits have no cards left.

Rules

A few fundamental and exceptive rules are essential for understanding the game play. Some are structured differently from the other popular card games. Players who have prior experience with other card games, such as poker, and Big Two, often prejudice the rules.

Fundamentals

• Individual cards are ranked. Colored Joker > Black-and-White Joker > 2 > Ace (A) > King (K) > Queen (Q) > Jack (J) > 10 > 9 > 8 > 7 > 6 > 5 > 4 > 3.
• Suits have no value. Players can play the game fine with all the suits erased from the cards!
• Compare only the same category with the same number of cards. A player can only beat the prior hand using of the same category with the exact same number of cards.
• Kicker's rank does not count.

The Nuke and the Bomb

The Nuke and the Bomb are worth specific mentioning since they are very different breed in terms of game play.

• The Nuke can beat everything in the game. Nuke ranks higher than Bomb.
• A Bomb can beat everything except the Nuke. A Bomb can beat another Bomb with a lower rank.
• Nuke is not considered as a pair. It cannot be used as a Kicker.

Special Category	Description	Example	Special Note
Nuke	Colored Joker and Black-and-White Joker	Colored Joker + Black-and-White Joker	It can beat everything in the game.
Bomb	Four of a kind	3-3-3-3 (the lowest ranking Bomb), 2-2-2-2 (the highest ranking Bomb)	It can beat any other category and individual card except Nuke or another Bomb with a higher rank.

Category

Category is the counterpart of hands in poker, except there are more variations and not necessarily consisted of only five cards. There are two types of Category: Primary and High. Note that the High Categories consist of some added card(s), called Kicker, which rank does not count.

Category		Description	Example		Special Note
Primal Set	Kicker		Lowest rank / least no. of card	Highest rank / largest no. of card
Pair	Х	Two matching cards of equal rank.	3-3	2-2	Nuke is not considered as One Pair.
Trio	Х	Three of a Kind: Three individual cards of the same rank	3-3-3	2-2-2
Single Chain	Х	Five individual cards or more in rank sequence	3-4-5-6-7	3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-J-Q-K-A	The Jokers and 2 cannot be used.
Pair Chain	Х	Three or more One Pair in rank sequence	5-5-6-6-7-7	5-5-6-6-7-7-8-8-9-9-10-10-J-J-Q-Q-K-K-A-A	The Jokers and 2 cannot be used. Consecutive pairs are required.
Trio Chain	Х	Two or more Trio in rank sequence. Also called Chopper.	3-3-3-4-4-4	9-9-9-10-10-10-J-J-J-Q-Q-Q-K-K-K-A-A-A	The Jokers and 2 cannot be used. Consecutive trios are required.

Category with Kicker

High Categories	Description	Example	Special Note
Trio with Solo	Three cards of the same rank with a single Kicker	10-10-10-6, A-A-A-3, Q-Q-Q-6
Trio with Pair	Three cards of the same rank with One Pair	9-9-9-5-5, 10-10-10-8-8, A-A-A-3-3
Four with Dual Solo	Four cards of the same rank with two Singles	J-J-J-J-3-8, K-K-K-5-6, 8-8-8-4-9
Four with Dual Pair	Four cards of the same rank with 2 pairs. Bomb could beat Four with Two Pairs.	Q-Q-Q-Q-4-4-8-8, A-A-A-A-6-6-9-9, 10-10-10-10-3-3-5-5	Four with Two Pair cannot be regarded as Bomb
Trio Chain with Solo	2 or more consecutive Three of a Kind hands (not including 2 or Joker) and each Three of a Kind along with a Single card.	8-8-8-9-9-9-3-4, 9-9-9-10-10-10-J-J-J-Q-Q-Q-K-K-K-A-A-A-3-4-5-6-7-8	The Jokers and 2 cannot be used.
Trio Chain with Dual Pair	2 or more consecutive Three of a Kind (not including 2 or Jokers) and each Three of a Kind along with One Pair	J-J-J-Q-Q-Q-6-6-7-7, 9-9-9-10-10-10-J-J-J-Q-Q-Q-K-K-K-A-A-A-3-3-4-4-5-5-6-6-7-7-8-8	The Jokers and 2 cannot be used.

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Basic Strategy

Players can deal with unrelated or useless cards by making them the Kicker Card.

Nuke and Bomb are sharp weapons in the game. If they are in one's hand, one should make full use of it when time comes.

History

The game is originated and popularized in Huangshan District and Anhui . Dou Di Zhu popularity spreads to Shanghai and Chengdu in China, which are among the four direct-controlled municipalities.

Origin of the name Dou Di Zhu

The class struggle during the Cultural Revolution in China reportedly authorized the peasants to violate the human rights of the landlords who were among the Five Black Categories and Stinking Old Ninth, whence the name Dou Di Zhu, (Chinese: 斗地主; pinyin: Doù Dìzhǔ; literally "Fight Landlord"). China's Generation Y, who are among one of the most enthusiastic player groups, has no personal experience of the class struggle. Nowadays, the name of the game carries no negative connotation.

Dou Di Zhu tournaments

In 2005, 117,931 people participated in the Dou De Zhu online tournament held by GICQ, an online game development and operation company in China.

In 2006, another Dou Di Zhu online tournament held by www.vnet.cn, attracted 200,000 players to compete with each other.

In September 2007, YunNanHong held a traditional competition of Dou Di Zhu in Kunming, China, where over a hundred people competed for the first prize (source: yndaily.com).

Dou Di Zhu tournaments are held in Chinese cities every year, the winners not only recieve high prize but also become popular experts in Dou Di Zhu.

Popularity

From the first release of Dou Di Zhu Online(Chinese version) in 2001 developed by GICQ(ourgame.com), surprisingly, it has been an instant hit. The zenith amount of player reached to 50,000 in December,2002. In 2004, the peak amount of player soared to 100,000 players. .

China has 18 million ese Online Game Research Report in 2005(《2005中国网络游戏研究报告》) made by iResearch, a marketing research and consultant company focusing on the field of online media and game, has published that there were 17,900,000 players being the loyal fans of the casual game while Dou Di Zhu leading the core place..

There are almost 1 million concurrent Dou Di Zhu players on the Tencent QQ game platform alone..

This data displays the popularity of Dou Di Zhu has been climbing year after year, from 50,000 to 100,00, to 1,000,000.

In 2008, it's estimated that there will be roughly 1,450,000 online players per hour in QQPlatform while 76,000 in GICQ. This means that the total amount of player in the QQPlatform and GICQ will come to 1,526,000 per hour, taking other platforms for granted in China.It is more popular than other Chinese poker games like "Chinese poker" and " Big Two"

Dou Di Zhu versus Poker

Statistics gathered from partygaming.com in 2006, state that there were approximately 3,000,000 online poker players worldwide. Compared with the number of Dou Di Zhu players, being over 17,900,000 in 2005.

From pokerscout.com, a website that provides sources of data for the online Poker market, we can have an overview of the online Poker industry. There are averagely 51,000 players online each day.It shows that PokerStars enjoys US prime time highest traffic with 14,000 average players and ranks on the first place that not any other online Poker website can parallel with. Full Tilt Poker follows PokerSatrs with 6600 average players. However, it is easy to spot that the QQPlatform with 1,450,000 online players per hour is a big boy while the NO.1 Pokeronline platform with 51,000 is just a baby boy..

Another website, Pokerlistings.com which offers in-depth analysis of online Poker, has published their data and analysis. It demonstrated that in Jan 2008 there were around 10,000 monthly online players by room in PokerStars.com, with FullTiltPoker tailing after it (around 7,000), followed by Party Poker with 5,000 and Titan Poker ranking the 4th as well as Mansion Poker the 5th with around 4,000. These top 5 Poker rooms have gulped 77% popularity by player volume. Therefore, it can be estimated that there are 39,000 monthly online players in Jan 2008. The Pokerlistings.com also shows that the peak hour of all rooms has roughly 5,300 players..

Compared with Poker, Dou Di Zhu is not a worldwide card game but still a regional one. There are 1,526,000 players per hour in Dou Di Zhu rooms in QQPlatform and GICQ while around 5,300 players in the peak hour of all Poker rooms as referred above. Definitely, in the aspect of popularity, Dou Di Zhu is miles ahead of Poker and it takes an awful lot effort for Poker to court Dou Di Zhu. It is beyond our imagination that how giant the number would be, if Dou Di Zhu had been played globally. The last thing one can deny is that Dou Di Zhu is a stunning card game. It haunts billions of people in China and is expected to enjoy a big boost by global promotion.

The myth of Dou Di Zhu's unprecedented popularity in China is still uncovered. However, the fact that millions upon millions of Chinese players fancied by this game have proved that it is worth trying and playing. It is acknowledged in China that Dou Di Zhu is easy-to-learn but hard-to-master. It cannot be simply posited as a fun game because it requires mathematic and strategic thinking as well as intended execution. This game is not easy to play. To similarity of Poker, the risk of winning and losing is unforeseen even though how skillful one is. Players should have big pictures in their brains while deal cards cautiously. All in all, it is concluded that Dou Di Zhu, a game with profound culture cue, is good for one's brain. Therefore, UMGE LLC plays the role as a pioneer to develop and introduce the English version of Dou Di Zhu, called AceNuke to the world.