Dou Dizhu

You play with one complete 54-card deck: thirteen ranks in four suits plus the black joker and the red joker. No cards are removed and none are added.

Ranks run, from low to high: 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, J, Q, K, A, 2, small joker, big joker. Two points matter. The 2 beats the ace, but it still sits below both jokers. And suits never count for anything: the four cards of a rank are completely equivalent, so the eight of clubs and the eight of hearts are the same card as far as the rules go. There are no wild cards in this game; the jokers are simply the two highest single cards.

After the shuffle, cards are dealt one at a time counter-clockwise, 17 to each player, 51 in all. The remaining three cards stay face down in the middle of the table as the kitty. No card is turned face up during the deal, so all three hands are hidden information at the start.

The first bidder is chosen at random by the system. That choice does not depend on any particular card and it leaks no information about anybody's hand. Starting from that player, bidding goes counter-clockwise and each player gets exactly one turn: you may bid 1, 2 or 3, or pass, and your bid must be strictly higher than the current highest bid. A bid of 3 ends the auction immediately, since nobody can go higher. When the single round is over, the highest bidder becomes the landlord.

If all three players pass, the deal is void: the cards are shuffled and dealt again, and neither the base score nor the multiplier carries over.

Once the landlord is settled, the three kitty cards are shown to everybody and then added to the landlord's hand. The landlord therefore holds 20 cards and each peasant holds 17, and the landlord leads the first trick. The value the landlord bid becomes the base score for the deal. Base score and multiplier are two separate quantities that are multiplied together at scoring time; bidding itself never creates a multiplier.

• Single (1 card), pair (2 of a rank), triplet (3 of a rank, which may be played on its own)
• Triplet with a single (4 cards) and triplet with a pair (5 cards)
• Straight: 5 to 12 consecutive ranks, one card each, from 3 up to A at most
• Straight of pairs: at least 3 consecutive ranks, one pair each
• Airplane: at least 2 consecutive ranks, three cards each, playable without kickers
• Airplane with singles and airplane with pairs: an airplane plus one kicker card, or one kicker pair, per triplet
• Quad with two singles (6 cards) and quad with two pairs (8 cards): four of a rank used as a whole, plus kickers
• Bomb (four of a rank) and rocket (both jokers)

Four restrictions make sure any played set has exactly one reading. First, a play counts as a bomb only when the whole play is exactly four of a rank, and two jokers together are always the rocket; 444455 is a six-card quad with two singles and 44445566 is an eight-card quad with two pairs, so neither is a bomb, neither outranks other types, and neither doubles the multiplier. Second, four of a rank must be used as a unit, and so must the pair of jokers: you cannot use three of them as the body and the fourth as a kicker, and you cannot split them into two kicker pairs — which is why 44445555 is not a legal play at all. This restricts the cards you actually put down, not the cards you hold: with four sevens in hand you may still play just three of them as a triplet with a single. Third, a kicker may never share the rank of the body, so four threes played together can only be a bomb. Fourth, no rank may appear more than twice among the kickers, and the two jokers may not both be kickers (a single joker may). That fourth rule is not redundant: if wings allowed three of a rank, 333444555666 would be both a four-triplet airplane and a three-triplet airplane with 666 attached, and the two readings have different top ranks.

One more easily missed point: straights, straights of pairs and airplanes never include the 2 or either joker. Consecutive structures stop at the ace.

The landlord plays the first set, then play passes counter-clockwise. To beat the previous play you must match both the combination type and the number of cards: a five-card straight cannot beat a triplet with a pair, and a six-card straight cannot beat a five-card straight either.

Only the body is compared; kickers never count towards strength. Fixed-length types compare the rank of the body, consecutive types compare the highest rank in the body. So KKK + 3 beats QQQ + big joker — a large kicker buys you nothing.

There are exactly two exceptions to matching types. A bomb beats any non-bomb combination, and bombs beat each other by rank. The rocket beats everything including every bomb, and nothing beats the rocket. Note carefully that a quad with kickers is not a bomb: it can only beat the same type with the same card count and a lower body (555566 beats 444433), it cannot cross combination types, and playing it does not double the multiplier.

You may pass when it is your turn to follow, but the player who leads a trick may not pass — that player must put down a set, which is what guarantees the deal always finishes. After the other two players pass in succession the trick ends, the lead returns to the player who made the last play, and that player may open with any combination.

The side that runs out of cards first wins. If the landlord goes out, the landlord wins; if either peasant goes out, the peasant side wins — both peasants do not need to finish. How many cards are left changes nothing: scoring never looks at the remaining hands.

The score is base score × multiplier. The base score is the 1, 2 or 3 the landlord bid. The multiplier starts at 1 and doubles per event: once for every bomb played, once for the rocket, and once more for a spring or an anti-spring. Quads with kickers do not double it. A spring is the landlord going out while neither peasant has played a single card; an anti-spring is a peasant going out while the landlord has played nothing but the opening set. The two belong to opposite winners, so at most one can happen in a deal. This site has no doubling or super-doubling round, and the multiplier has no cap.

Scores are zero-sum. With S = base score × multiplier: if the landlord wins, the landlord scores +2S and each peasant −S; if the peasants win, the landlord scores −2S and each peasant +S. The three results always add up to zero.

Dou Dizhu grew out of a folk card game from the Hubei region of China and spread nationwide at the end of the twentieth century as online card rooms became popular, making it one of the most widely played card games in the Chinese-speaking world. Its skeleton is that of a climbing game — beat the previous play or pass, and get rid of your cards first — but what makes it stick is the asymmetric one-against-two structure: the landlord gets three extra cards in exchange for facing two opponents alone, and the bidding round lets the players themselves put a price on that imbalance.

The game goes by several names that all mean the same thing: 斗地主 in simplified Chinese and 鬥地主 in traditional Chinese, transliterated in English sources as Dou Dizhu (also written Doudizhu) and translated as Fight the Landlord, and written 闘地主 in Japanese. They are different spellings of one three-player game; the rules do not change with the name.

Play free online against two computer players, with one landlord facing a team of two peasants. Each deal begins with bids of 1, 2 or 3, or a pass. The highest bidder takes the three kitty cards and leads. Your role can change from deal to deal, so you get to practise both independent play and teamwork.

The game uses 54 cards, without wild cards or an open-hand option. Bidding lasts one round and the first bidder is chosen randomly. Bombs, the rocket, spring and anti-spring increase the multiplier; there is no separate doubling round. A quad with kickers helps clear loose cards but is not a bomb.

Before bidding, group your cards into straights, pairs and triplets. Count the awkward singles left over, then consider which high cards could win the lead back. As a peasant, watch your partner’s remaining cards as closely as the landlord’s. Letting a partner keep the lead can be more useful than playing your highest card.

Bidding is really a valuation of your hand. Three things usually decide it: whether you hold high cards (2s, jokers, a bomb), whether your hand runs smoothly into long straights or straights of pairs, and how many awkward loose cards you are left with. The kitty is a lottery ticket — it can complete a straight or it can be three useless cards.

The landlord's job is control. Holding high cards is not a reason to play them early; the point is to win the lead and then run your longest chain of plays. A landlord who keeps losing the lead to two peasants in turn will find 20 cards impossible to unload.

The peasants' job is cooperation. The two of them are one side: if your partner has already spent a big card to stop the landlord, do not beat your own side, and when it is your turn to make room, play small and hand the lead over. The most common peasant mistake is not misplaying a card but playing against the partner.

Counting cards pays better here than anything else. Track three things: whether the jokers are gone, how many 2s have appeared, and whether a rank has already shown all four copies — if it has, nobody can be holding that bomb. Timing bombs matters just as much, because a bomb doubles the score for both sides; blowing one up from a losing position simply doubles what you are about to pay.