Tien Gow Dominoes Game Rules

• Tien Gow is a 4-player trick-taking game played with one set of Chinese Dominoes.
• Chinese dominoes set consists of 32 tiles which are divided in two suits or groups. "Civil" and "Military". There are 21 unique combinations. Civil suit contains 2 each of eleven tiles (6-6, 1-1, 4-4, 1-3, 5-5, 3-3, 2-2, 5-6, 4-6, 1-6, 1-5). Military suit contains one each of ten tiles (3-6, 4-5; 2-6, 3-5; 2-5, 3-4; 2-4; 1-4, 2-3; 1-2).
• One player is randomly selected to be banker for the first round who also takes first turn for the round. All dominoes are shuffled and dealt equally to the players (including banker).
• Player can lead a trick in one of the following manners
• Single - a single tile
• Pair - a set of two tiles
• Triple - a set of three tiles
• Quadruple - a set of 4 tiles
• Subsequent players after lead must play equal number of tiles in that trick. If player plays a higher combination, then it is played face-up. For equal or lower combination, it must be played face-down (or simply discarded face-down). Once all four players have played for the trick, the player with highest combination wins the trick and takes lead for the next trick.
• Tile Ranking - Tiles are divided into two suits and their ranks are as following (high to low)
  

  Civil	Military
  [6-6] Teen / Heaven [1-1] Day / Earth [4-4] Yun / Man [3-1] Gor / Goose [5-5] Mooy / Flower [3-3] Chong / Double Three [2-2] Bon / Board [6-5] Foo / Hatchet [6-4] Ping / Partition [6-1] Tit / Long Leg Seven [5-1] Look / Big Head Six	[6-3] and [5-4] Chop Gow (Nines) [6-2], [5-3] Chop Bot (Eights) [4-3], [5-2] Chop Chit (Sevens) [4-2] Luk [4-1], [3-2] Chop Ng (Fives) [2-1] Saam

• Pair Ranking - Pairs are grouped in three categories and each of the categories are ranked from high to low as following
  

  Civil Pair	Military Pair	Mixed Pair
  [6-6] and [6-6] Heaven [1-1] and [1-1] Earth [4-4] and [4-4] Man [3-1] and [3-1] Goose [5-5] and [5-5] Flower [3-3] and [3-3] Long [2-2] and [2-2] Board [6-5] and [6-5] Hatchet [6-4] and [6-4] Partition [6-1] and [6-1] Long Leg Seven [5-1] and [5-1] Big Head Six	[6-3] and [5-4] Mixed Nine [6-2] and [5-3] Mixed Eight [5-2] and [4-3] Mixed Seven [4-1] and [3-2] Mixed Five	[6-6] and [6-3], [6-6] and [5-4] Heaven & Nine [1-1] and [5-3], [1-1] and [6-2] Earth & Eight [4-4] and [4-3], [4-4] and [5-2] Man & Seven [3-1] and [4-1], [3-1] and [3-2] Goose & Five

• Special Pair - Combination of [4-2] and [2-1] is known as "Gee Joon" or "Supreme Pair". This pair can not be beaten if played first (or led in a trick) but it can not beat a pair if played after another pair.
• Triple and Quadruple - Triples and Quadruples are made up of civil and military tiles as following
  1. Heavens and Nines
  2. Earths and Eights
  3. Man and Sevens
  4. Goose and Fives
  One or two tiles from each of the civil and military combinatons as specified above can be used to make a Triple or a Quadruple.
• A single tile or a pair can only be beaten by a tile or a pair of higher ranking in the same suit respectively. If equal ranked tile or pair are played then tile/pair which was played first wins. A triple or quadruple combination can only be beaten if civil and military subsets in the combination are equal in number and individually beat subsets of same suit in other combination. For ex, a triple containing 2 civil and 1 military tiles can only be beaten by another triple containing 2 civil and 1 military tiles of higher ranks. If it contains 1 civil and 2 military tiles of higher ranks then it can not beat the second triple.
• Any tile can be used while discarding and there is no need to match suit of the current trick.
• Player winning last trick is winner of the round and becomes banker for the next round. The aim of the game is to win last trick in each round since player winning last round (or the winner) always wins more points than other players.
• Scoring - Tiles won by each player are counted at the end of the round and divided by 4. If the count is less than 4 then player pays difference (4 - count) to the winner. If count is 4 then no points are exchanged. If count is more than 4 then player gets (count - 4) points from the winner. Points for the banker are doubled so banker pays double points to other players and also receives double points from other players in each round.
• A player needs to win at least one trick from the first 7 tiles otherwise he/she can not play for the last trick and would simply need to discard his/her remaining tile in the last trick. The player with no trick pays 5 points to the winner. If last trick is a multi-tile trick, then this rule is not applicable.
• Each player starts with 100 points. The game is played for 6 rounds and the player with highest points at the end wins the game.
• Read more about this game on Pagat.