Taiwanese Poker Rules
Taiwanese Poker is a points game for 2 to 6 players with no betting rounds. You get seven cards and split them into three hands: one card on top, two in the middle and four on the bottom. Then two shared boards are dealt, and each of your hands plays against each opponent’s matching hand on both boards.
Phenom’s version is played with two boards, 1, 2 and 3 points per row, and an 8-point Home Run bonus. There are no royalties, no fouls and no Fantasyland.
Taiwanese Poker
Seven cards, three hands, two boards: every row plays on both boards for points.
- Players
- 2–6
- Your cards
- 7, split 1 / 2 / 4
- Boards
- 2 shared boards of 5 cards
- Points
- Top 1, middle 2, bottom 3, per board
- Home Run
- +8 for winning all six rows
- Deck
- 52 cards
How a hand plays
- Everyone is dealt 7 cards face down.
- At the same time, every player sets their cards: 1 card in the top row, 2 in the middle and 4 on the bottom. There are no discards, and your rows don’t have to be in any order.
- Opponents’ settings stay face down until everyone has confirmed. Then all settings are turned up together.
- Two shared boards are dealt, one after the other: board 1’s flop, turn and river, then board 2’s.
- Every row is scored against every opponent on both boards, and the points are settled.
How each row plays
- Top (1 card): the best five-card hand from your card and the five board cards. It plays like one-card Hold’em, and you may use the board alone.
- Middle (2 cards): the best five-card hand from your two cards and the five board cards, like Hold’em.
- Bottom (4 cards): Omaha rules. You must use exactly two of your four cards and exactly three board cards. A flush needs two of your cards in that suit.
- Every row is a high hand with standard poker rankings, and every row is played on both boards.
Scoring
- You settle with each opponent separately, board by board.
- On each board, the better top row wins 1 point, the better middle row 2 points and the better bottom row 3 points from that opponent.
- A tied row is a chop: no points move.
- Home Run: win all six rows (three rows on both boards) outright against an opponent and they pay you 8 more points. A single tied row breaks the Home Run, and sweeping just one board earns nothing extra.
- The most you can win or lose against one opponent in a hand is 20 points: 12 for the rows plus 8 for a Home Run.
No fouls, no royalties
Unlike Open Face Chinese, Taiwanese Poker has no row-order rule, so you can’t foul. The boards can make your top row stronger than your bottom, and that’s fine. There are also no royalties and no Fantasyland.
Example hands
Taiwanese Jokers
Taiwanese Poker from a 54-card deck with two wild jokers, dealt only to players.
- Players
- 2–6
- Deck
- 54 cards (2 wild jokers)
- Your cards
- 7, split 1 / 2 / 4
- Boards
- 2 shared boards, never a joker
- Points
- Top 1, middle 2, bottom 3, per board; Home Run +8
How a hand plays
Everything plays exactly like Taiwanese Poker: 7 cards, top 1, middle 2 and bottom 4, two shared boards, the same points and the same Home Run. The difference is that the deck holds two jokers.
Jokers
- Jokers are only dealt to players’ hands. A joker never appears on a board.
- You can be dealt no jokers, one or both, and you can place a joker in any row.
- A joker is wild. When a row is scored, the joker counts as the card that gives that row its best hand on that board. It is worked out separately for each board, so the same joker can be an ace on board 1 and a ten on board 2.
- A joker can’t become a card that is already in its row or on the board it is being scored against. Two jokers in the same row become two different cards.
- The bottom row still plays exactly two of your cards and three board cards, with a joker counting as one of your cards.
- Jokers keep their joker art at showdown. The result label on each row tells you what the joker made on that board.
Scoring
- Scoring is the same as Taiwanese Poker: on each board the top row is worth 1 point, the middle 2 and the bottom 3, ties chop, and winning all six rows outright against an opponent earns an 8-point Home Run.
- There are no royalties and no fouls.
Setting your cards
- Everyone sets at the same time on a shared timer, with a time bank if you need it.
- The deadline is firm. If your time runs out, the server finishes your setting for you, keeping the cards you had already placed where possible, and you are sat out after the hand.
- Your cards arrive sorted by rank. Sorting only changes how they are shown, never where they are placed.
Points and money
- Every Taiwanese table has a point value, shown as an amount per point (for example 0.50 / pt). Your points for the hand are multiplied by it.
- The table takes rake from each winner’s winnings, capped per hand.
- To be dealt in, you need enough to cover the most you could lose: 20 points against each other player in the hand. If not everyone can cover that, the table deals the largest group of players who can, and asks anyone short to add on (a player already at the table maximum is sat out instead).
- After you have played, if your stack drops below 60 points you are asked to add on and aren’t dealt in again until you reach 60. Exactly 60 is enough.
- When you are asked to add on after a hand, the table holds your seat for up to 30 seconds before dealing without you. Everyone sees the countdown.
- Settlement between two players is limited by the stacks both of them started the hand with.
These pages describe how games are dealt at Phenom Poker. At every table, Rules in the table menu (the ••• menu on desktop, the menu drawer on phones) shows the short version for the game being dealt, with this table's stakes and limits.
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