Open Face Chinese Poker Pineapple Rules

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Open Face Chinese Poker Pineapple Rules Rating: 3,9/5 1200 votes

INTRODUCTION TO OPEN FACE CHINESE POKER. Open Face Chinese Poker (OFC) is a variant on Chinese poker- both employ 13 cards to construct 3 separate hands. This variant of poker was developed in Finland 2011, spread to Russia, and finally made it’s way to the United States in 2012. This is a high-stakes poker game played alongside larger poker. Unlike traditional Chinese poker where all 13 cards are dealt, or standard OFC where one card is dealt in every drawing round, in Pineapple OFC each player is dealt five cards in the beginning followed by four more rounds of three cards each. After each of the five rounds, players set their cards in order, ending with the dealer button position.

“Am I making the right move?” This is what I ask myself before I take each and every turn in Pineapple OFC. According to my score on the rating system (that I helped create), the answer is: not every time. I only get about 70 percent of tough situations correct, and have an average error of .5 points / tricky spot. This means I probably give my opponent a free point every couple of hands. With that kind of error rate, how could I even be expect to win? Well, luckily, my opponents are making even more errors than me.

The truth is we are all making a lot of mistakes in this fairly new game and unexplored game. That’s great for the fast learners, but could cost you a pretty penny if you are a late-bloomer or haven’t yet put in the effort to learn advanced OFC strategy. Let me show you four of the biggest mistakes I see players just like you make in this game time and time again:

Open Face Chinese Poker Pineapple Rules

Not Gambling for FantasyLand Enough

Sometimes the fear and embarrassment of fouling convinces you to play it safe in spots where it is clearly “game on.” You have to remember, it’s not whether you hit 50 percent of the time or more, it’s whether you make more points on average or not. Most Fantasyland gambles only need 25 percent to be worth it, so stop waiting for the golden opportunity and just go.

In this spot, gambling for Fantasyland is 2.6 points better on average than playing it safe. And it doesn’t particularly even matter that our opponent will foul a significant amount of the time because our hand is just plainly better on average if we make the gamble. If you aren’t making “risky” plays in Pineapple Open Face, you are making a mistake.

Completely Senseless Gambles

Just because you can improve doesn’t mean you should. I see this problem a lot when someone has set a rather ambitious flush draw or straight draw in the middle, but hasn’t developed their back at all. It’s especially true when you hit your trips card in the middle with just one, or even two pair, in the back. This is quite often a bad time to gamble.

Open Face Chinese Poker Pineapple Rules Card Game

In this situation, putting the ace up front forces you into a runner-runner situation, where you have to make a full house on the bottom and two pair or better in the middle. That is a dream my friend, and it’s a mistake of over seven points! Do not take a good hand and throw it away simply for a chance at “the big time.”

Bailing Too Early

Open Face Chinese Poker Pineapple Rules

If you are mid-game and thinking about breaking a three-flush for a single pair in the back, you better need a really good reason. A reason like, half your flush cards are dead, you can get to Fantasyland a lot easier if you pair the back, or you will scoop your opponent a lot even with such a weak hand. Most of the time, it’s just correct to wait it out for the flush, or bail on the next street. After all, there will be six more opportunities to hit something that helps you out, just be patient.

In this hand, it can be sometimes tempting to just play it safe and put the ten in the back, especially if there are more dead diamonds. But that is just way too safe, even with 3-4 additional dead diamonds! The correct play in this exact spot is actually to gamble for Fantasyland with the queen up front and ten in the middle (because of the three of diamonds…think about it). If you are playing it “super safe” you are making a mistake of over four points, yikes.

A bird in the hand…Don’t sacrifice a great card for the back to take a big risk in the front.

Now there are plenty of times to gamble in this game, but I have found that most of the time you are presented a made hand, you should take that before risking it all for Fantasyland or the like. This problem usually arises when you get three great cards for your hand and still have to throw one (or as I like to call it, “rich people problems.”) Generally speaking, you should build the bottom/middle in this situation and throw your “gamble” card. The main reason this holds true so often is because you are throwing away an out, thus reducing your chances, plus you will have another opportunity to hit that Fantasyland card on the next draw anyways. So think about those future opportunities before throwing a perfectly good hand away.

In this situation, we have to decide whether to take Fantasyland now or take quads now… #richpeopleproblems. We don’t even have to set ourselves all-in and Fantasyland is worth approximately 14.5 points (7 for queens and around 7.5 for the added value of being in Fantasyland next hand), while quads is only worth ten points. Seems like a no brainer right? Well, actually, since we have five outs to hit Fantasyland on the next draw (45%), its 4.7 points better to play quads!!! Am I blowing your mind yet?

If any of this helped you or if I was able to help you solve one leak in your game, please let me know by tweeting at @ofcstrategy. I truly hope I was able to give some quick pointers and valuable insight into errors that I see players making all the time. To see where you stand and how many errors you’re making on a regular basis, check out openfacesolutions.com and sign up for a free trial to use our tactics trainer, simulator, and the only Open Face Chinese ranking system on the web. ♠

Derric “SixPeppers” Haynie is the author of Quantum Poker and creator of OpenFaceSolutions.com and OpenFaceStrategy.com. Check out those sites for more articles, solutions, tactics, news and information on Pineapple Open Face Chinese Poker.

Table Of Contents

Chinese

Introduction

Open-Face Chinese Poker with 2-7 in the Middle — a.k.a. “2-7 OFC” or “Deuce Pineapple” — is a turn-based card game that is played heads up, or sometimes three-handed. Players take turns, drawing cards and placing them into three separate poker hands. Each of these hands is played face up, meaning that players can see all of the cards that have been played, and these cards can’t be moved between each player’s three poker hands once they have been placed.

The “Deuce” designation means that the middle poker hand is played according to the rankings used in 2-7 lowball, while the other two hands are played as regular “high” poker hands. The game might sound complicated, but it really isn’t.

Objective

The objective of 2-7 Open-Face Chinese is to place 13 cards into three hands: a five-card bottom hand, a five-card middle hand, and a three-card top hand.

As noted, the game plays just like high-only Pineapple OFC, except with the middle played as a 2-7 lowball hand. This means that your bottom hand is a regular five-card poker hand (with flushes, straight and full houses), the top hand is a three-card high hand (including pairs, trips, but no three-card straights or flushes), while the middle hand must contain five low cards with no pairs, no straights, and no flushes. The lower these cards the better.

Taking Turns and Discarding

Open Face Chinese Poker Pineapple Rules 34

The game is called Open-Face Chinese Poker (or OFC for short) because you’re building these three hands face up a few cards at a time.

As with all Open-Face games, you start by getting dealt five cards and place them all. On subsequent turns (following the procedure used in Pineapple OFC), you get three cards face down and place two of them in any of the available rows (bottom, middle or top).

Rules

The unused card then gets discarded face down. Discards are out of play, and not shuffled back into the deck, and your opponents are not allowed to see your discards. Therefore there are only enough cards in a deck to play Deuce Pineapple OFC either heads-up or three-handed.

Fantasyland and 'Super Fantasyland'

Open Face Chinese Poker Strategy

If you make a qualifying hand with kings or better up top, or a wheel — — in the middle, then on the next hand you enter Fantasyland. Just like in high-only Pineapple OFC, in Fantasyland you get 14 cards right away and set 13 of them into three rows face down while discarding one. Your opponents then play out their hands normally, and the result is scored against your hand.

You can stay in Fantasyland, earning another round in this advantageous position, by making a big enough bonus. For Deuce Pineapple you need either trips (three of a kind) on top, a wheel low in the middle, or quads (four of a kind) or better on the bottom to remain in Fantasyland.

Meanwhile, in a twist from high-only Pineapple OFC, you can also earn a 15-card “Super Fantasyland” round by qualifying for Fantasyland twice in the same normal hand. Here, for example, the player qualifies for Super Fantasyland by making both aces on top and a wheel in the middle:

This double-bonus is rare, but well worth it. If you stay in Fantasyland, “Super” or otherwise, you get a normal 14-card Fantasyland hand.

Open Face Chinese Poker Online

Qualification and Scoring

To make a qualifying hand, your top hand must be no better (as a normal poker hand) than your bottom hand. And your middle low hand must be at least a ten-low, meaning that your biggest card is no higher than a ten without a pair, a straight, or a flush. As with other Chinese Poker variants, a disqualified or “fouled” hand automatically loses every row.

The three rows are scored against your opponent with the winner of each row getting +1 point. If you win all three rows, this also results in a +3 scoop bonus. In addition to winning, scooping, and possible Fantasyland qualification, you also get points for any bonuses earned by a qualifying hand, even if that hand loses the row.

Bonuses for the bottom hand start with a straight, the low middle hand with a nine-low, and the top row with a pair of sixes. Full bonuses are listed here:

Conclusion

There you have it. Welcome to Open-Face Chinese Poker with 2-7 in the Middle — or “Deuce Pineapple” — now available at TonyBet Poker.

OFC rules have been contributed by Nikolai Yakovenko. Known as 'Googles,' Yakovenko is originally from Moscow, Russia and is now a poker player and software developer residing in Brooklyn, New York. Yakovenko has made both World Series of Poker and World Poker Tour final tables. Meanwhile after several years at Google New York working on ranking algorithms, he's been developing independent software projects ever since. He also helped create the ABC Open-Face Chinese Poker iPhone App. You can follow Yakovenko on Twittter at @ivan_bezdomny.

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