Big Two

Players and equipment

Big Two is a game for four, each playing for themselves, with a standard 52-card pack and no jokers. Two and three can play with the changes under Variations, but four is the game: every card is dealt, everybody holds thirteen, and nothing is hidden except what is in other people's hands. It goes by Big Deuce and Deuces in English, Choh Dai Di or Dai Di in Cantonese, Da Lao Er in Mandarin, Pusoy Dos in the Philippines and Bu Bu Gao Sheng in Taiwan, and the rules drift a little from one table to the next, so agree the house rules before the first deal.

The two is the highest card, which is where the name comes from. Cards rank two, ace, king, queen, jack, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three — the three is the lowest card in the pack and the two the highest. Suits rank too, and the order matters whenever two cards or two combinations are of the same rank.

Spades

Beats hearts, clubs and diamonds

The highest suit

Hearts

Beats clubs and diamonds

Second

Clubs

Beats diamonds

Third

Diamonds

Beaten by every other suit

The lowest suit

So the two of spades is the best single card in the game and the three of diamonds the worst, and the three of diamonds is also the card that starts the first deal. Some tables rank the suits differently; see Variations.

SquareScores keeps the score. It deals nothing and never sees a card. Every deal ends with a number against each player, and that is what goes into the app.

The deal

Thirteen each, one at a time, the whole pack. Deal and play go to the right, anticlockwise, at most Chinese tables; plenty of western tables deal and play to the left, and it makes no difference so long as everybody goes the same way. The dealer shuffles and the player on the dealer's right cuts.

Deal from the player on your right. Some tables turn up a card first and count its rank round the table to pick who gets the first card; most do not bother. The winner of each deal deals the next.

Play

Whoever holds the three of diamonds leads, and the three of diamonds must be in that first play — on its own, in a pair of threes, or as the low card of a five-card hand. After that, each player in turn either passes or plays a combination that beats the one on the table. A play can only be beaten by a combination of the same number of cards: a single by a higher single, a pair by a higher pair, a five-card hand by a stronger five-card hand. You can never answer a pair with three cards or a single with a pair.

The legal plays are these, and nothing else. There is no two pair, and a three of a kind cannot carry extra cards.

A single card

Higher rank wins, then higher suit

Any one card

A pair

Higher rank wins, then the pair holding the higher suit

Two cards of one rank

A triple

Higher rank wins

Three cards of one rank

A five-card hand

Stronger type wins, then as below

A poker hand of five cards

Five-card hands rank from the weakest type to the strongest, and any hand of a stronger type beats any hand of a weaker one, so the lowest full house beats the highest flush.

Straight

Highest card decides, then its suit

Five cards in sequence, mixed suits

Flush

Higher suit wins, then the highest card

Five cards of one suit, not in sequence

Full house

The rank of the triple decides

A triple and a pair

Four of a kind

The rank of the four decides

All four of a rank plus any one card

Straight flush

Highest card decides, then the suit

Five cards in sequence in one suit

In a straight the ace can be high, as in ace-king-queen-jack-ten, or low, as in five-four-three-two-ace, but never in the middle, and the two counts as the lowest card in a straight rather than the highest. The ace-high straight flush in spades is the best hand in the game. Tables differ on exactly which straights are allowed and how they rank, and that is the first house rule to settle; see Variations.

Passing costs you nothing. When your turn comes round again you may play if you can, and you are never obliged to beat a play just because you are able to. When everybody else has passed in turn, the last player to put cards down has won the trick: the cards are turned face down and set aside, and that player leads again with any legal combination of any size. The lead is the moment to switch — from singles to pairs, from pairs to a five-card hand — because the others must answer in kind or pass.

You may ask anybody how many cards they hold, at any time, and they have to tell you. A player down to one card is the whole table's problem, and knowing it is part of the game.

The deal ends the instant one player plays their last card. Nobody gets to beat that final play. The player who went out has won the deal, and everybody else counts the cards still in their hand.

Scoring

The winner of the deal scores nothing. Every other player takes penalty points for the cards left in their hand, and the penalty gets heavier the more they are holding.

Nine cards or fewer

1 to 9

One point per card

Ten, eleven or twelve cards

20, 22 or 24

Two points per card

All thirteen cards

39

Three points per card

So a player caught with four cards takes four points, a player with ten takes twenty, and a player who never got a card down takes thirty-nine. Fewest points over the deals you play wins. At tables playing for money the group agrees a stake per point and each pair of players settles the difference between their scores, which comes to the same thing: the player with the fewest points collects from everybody.

On SquareScores a Big Two sitting is one match on the score table and each deal is one round. When a deal ends, every player enters their own penalty — the winner a 0, everybody else their cards left times the multiplier, so a hand of ten goes in as 20 and not as 10 — and the app keeps the running total. The game is scored low, so the sheet ranks the fewest points first. There is no finish line in Big Two: you play an agreed number of deals, or until it is time to stop, and End match banks the totals as they stand and crowns whoever has the fewest. The Leaderboard counts the matches won, so a run of several sittings is a run of match wins. If the table plays the twos rule or one of the heavier scales under Variations, work the number out at the table and enter it; the sheet adds up whatever it is given.

A worked deal

Four players: Alice, Ben, Cara and Dev. Cara holds the three of diamonds and leads it as the bottom of a straight, three-four-five-six-seven. Dev beats it with a flush in hearts, Alice has nothing better and passes, and Ben passes too. Cara passes, so Dev takes the trick and leads a pair of fours. The pairs go round the table, Alice winning with a pair of kings; she leads singles, and the twos start to come out. A dozen tricks later Alice plays the two of spades on its own, nobody can beat it, and she leads her last card, a nine, and goes out. The others count their hands.

Alice

0

Went out

Ben

4

Four cards left, one point each

Cara

20

Ten cards left, two points each

Dev

39

Thirteen cards, three points each

Dev was never able to get a card down: Cara's opening straight went straight past him, the pairs were above his, and he was holding the kind of hand that sits there all deal. Each player enters their own number against that round on the sheet — a 0, a 4, a 20 and a 39 — and Alice leads the match with nothing against her. If the table were playing the twos rule and Alice had gone out on that two of spades instead of the nine, Ben, Cara and Dev would each enter double: 8, 40 and 78.

Ending

A deal ends when a player plays their last card, and that player wins the deal and deals the next. Play as many deals as you have agreed or have time for; there is no target to reach. When you stop, the player with the fewest penalty points wins the sitting, and on the sheet End match banks it. A player who is well behind can only catch up by going out first, since the winner of a deal takes no points at all, which is why the last few deals of a sitting are played hardest.

Count the twos before you lead

There are four twos and four aces, and they are what win tricks at the end of a deal. Watch which have been played. If three twos are gone and you hold the fourth, your two of anything is now the best single card in the pack, and you can lead a weak single knowing that whatever is played on it, you can take the trick back and keep the lead. A two still out against you means every single you lead can be stopped.

Keep the lead and change the shape

Whoever leads chooses how many cards the others must play. The best position in Big Two is to hold the lead with a hand of combinations the others cannot follow: lead a five-card hand when you think nobody has one, lead pairs when you hold the high pairs, lead singles only when your singles are good. A player who wins a trick with a pair and then leads a straight has forced the table to pass again, and may well play out the whole hand without being beaten.

Break up the hand you were dealt

Before your first play, sort your thirteen into the plays you intend to make: this pair, that triple, a straight, and the singles left over. The singles are the problem, because every low single you hold is a card you must get rid of on its own against three opponents. A five-card straight uses up five awkward cards in one go, so it is nearly always better to play a straight than to keep a pair inside it, even a good pair.

Shed low singles early

A three or a four on its own is almost unplayable late in the deal, when every trick is being fought over with twos and aces. Lead your worst single the first time you get the lead, while others still have middling cards they are happy to put down on it. The player who ends up holding thirteen cards nearly always had a hand full of low singles and waited for a moment that never came.

Mind the player with one card

Once somebody is down to one card, any single you play below their card hands them the deal. Lead a pair or a five-card hand if you have the lead, since they cannot answer with one card, and if you must play a single, play your highest. At money tables this is a rule and not advice: a player who leads carelessly into a one-card hand and loses the deal pays everybody's losses.

Which way the suits rank

The order given above — spades, hearts, clubs, diamonds — is the usual one. Pusoy Dos in the Philippines ranks diamonds highest, then hearts, spades and clubs, and the three of clubs leads the first deal. Some tables in Taiwan and Hong Kong use the Bridge order, spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs, and again the three of clubs leads. Any order works as long as everybody knows which it is, because the suit decides every tie between cards of one rank.

Straights with aces and twos

Tables differ more here than anywhere. Some count ace-two-three-four-five as the highest straight of all and two-three-four-five-six as the next, with ten-jack-queen-king-ace below those; some do not allow the ace-low straight at all; some let the two rank high so that jack-queen-king-ace-two is a straight; and many Hong Kong tables simply say that a two and a three are never consecutive. In Indonesia a straight with a two in it beats every straight without one. Settle this before the deal, since a straight you thought was best may be no straight at all at the next table.

How flushes are compared

The rule above compares flushes by suit first, so any heart flush beats any club flush. Many tables compare the highest card first and use the suit only to break a tie between flushes with the same top card, and some compare them exactly as poker does, card by card from the top. A flush is a common five-card hand, so it is worth knowing which rule you are playing.

The twos rule

If the winner's final play is nothing but twos — a single two, a pair of twos, or more — the other players' penalties are doubled. It rewards keeping your best cards to the very end and makes going out on a two of spades a small celebration. A stronger version doubles each player's penalty again for every two left in their hand, so nine cards including two twos cost 9 times 2 times 2 times 2, or 72 points.

Heavier penalties

Some tables double for eight or nine cards, treble for ten to twelve and quadruple for thirteen; others double at eight and double again at ten, so ten cards cost 40, eleven 44 and so on. The simplest scale, played by many, is one point per card with no doubling at all. Whatever the scale, the winner scores nothing and the number entered on the sheet is each player's own penalty.

Play on until one player is left

Instead of ending the deal when the first player goes out, the others play on, the turn passing to the next player after the one who went out, until only one player holds cards. Count each player's cards the moment they go out and enter that, as usual. If your table scores finishing order instead, as Pusoy Dos does — five, three, one and nothing — enter it as penalties, first 0, second 1, third 3, last 5, because the sheet ranks the fewest. The deal takes longer and the last two players fight it out with the lead changing hands.

The dragon

A Hong Kong rule: a player dealt one card of every rank, three up to two, shows the hand and wins the deal at once, and every other player takes the full thirty-nine points. It comes up rarely enough that most tables are happy to play it.

Three players

Deal seventeen cards each and turn the last card up in the middle; whoever holds the three of diamonds takes it, making eighteen, and leads. If the turned card is the three of diamonds itself, the holder of the three of clubs takes it. Penalties are counted as usual, with three points per card for a hand of thirteen or more. Another three-handed version deals thirteen each and leaves thirteen as a stock, from which a player who passes must draw.

Two players

Deal thirteen each and set the other twenty-six aside, or seventeen each with eighteen aside, or twenty-one each with ten aside. Whoever holds the lowest card dealt leads. The game is thinner with two, since so many cards are out of play that a two is often unbeatable, and some tables make a player who passes draw a card from the ones set aside.

Pusoy Dos scoring

The Filipino game scores for the winner rather than against the losers: one point for going out, or instead two if the last play was a two, four for a pair of twos, eight for three and sixteen for all four. The sheet ranks the fewest points, so enter it as penalties: the winner a 0 and everybody else the points the winner earned — 1, 2, 4, 8 or 16 — which ranks the same order. A Pusoy Dos table that plays on until one player is left scores finishing order instead, five, three, one and nothing, entered as under Play on above.

How many cards do you deal in Big Two?

Thirteen each, the whole pack, when four play. With three players deal seventeen each and turn the last card up for the holder of the three of diamonds; with two, deal thirteen, seventeen or twenty-one each and set the rest aside unseen.

Who goes first in Big Two?

The player holding the three of diamonds, who must play it in the first combination — alone, in a pair of threes or as the low card of a five-card hand. At tables that rank the suits differently the three of clubs leads instead. Many tables play that the winner of each deal leads the next rather than the holder of the three, and some that the loser does — whoever was left holding the most cards.

Can you play a straight with a two in Big Two?

Under the usual rule only as the low card of five-four-three-two-ace, since the two counts low in a straight and never high, and some tables do not allow that straight either. A few tables let the two rank high, and in Indonesia a straight holding a two beats every straight without one. There is no single answer, so agree it before you deal.

Do you have to play if you can in Big Two?

No. You may pass whenever you like, even holding a card that would beat the play, and passing does not stop you playing when your turn comes round again. The only obligation in the game is to lead the three of diamonds in the first play of a deal.

What beats what in Big Two?

A play is beaten only by a combination of the same number of cards. Singles, pairs and triples are compared by rank, then by suit, with the two highest and the three lowest and spades the highest suit. Five-card hands rank straight, flush, full house, four of a kind with an odd card, straight flush, and any hand of a higher type beats any hand of a lower one.

How is Big Two scored?

The player who goes out scores nothing. Everybody else takes one point per card left in hand, two per card with ten to twelve cards, and three per card with all thirteen, which is thirty-nine. Fewest points over the deals you play wins. At money tables the stake is per point and each pair settles the difference in their scores.

Is Big Two the same as Chinese Poker?

No. Chinese Poker is a game of arranging thirteen cards into three poker hands and comparing them against each opponent; nothing is played to the table in turn. Big Two uses the same poker combinations but is a climbing game, where each play has to beat the last and the aim is to be first out of cards. The two are often confused because both are played with thirteen cards and poker hands.