Valerie Putman:  The More the Merrier—Tichu for Five

It’s been cold here in Columbus, OH this week.  We didn’t have any snow days at our University, but many of the local K – 12 schools have been out all week.  We got quite a bit of snow on Tuesday evening and I wasn’t surprised to find that we were missing several students in my History of Psychology class on Wednesday.  I wanted to reward the students who made it in on such a cold, snowy day.  We’ve been covering Chinese influences on Psychology and I decided that a Chinese game, Tichu, was the perfect activity.  Unfortunately, with 10 students in attendance, there was no easy way to make tables of four.

I decided to teach the game in phases, starting with just the basic mechanism of going out with different legal leads and learning the 4 special cards.  I split the class into two tables of five and had them deal out all the cards (acknowledging that someone was getting extra cards—this could be balanced by having the dealer rotate between deals).  I put the legal leads (single, pair, triples, full house, step pairs, straight) on the board and explained the special cards.  I told them that 4 of a kind was a legal lead for now, but that it would be a special case later.  Then I had them play, without partners, just seeing who could go out first.  If someone played the dog, they could give the lead to any player of their choice.  They actually caught on quite quickly—though some of them kept referring to going out as “becoming president.â€?  There is a college drinking game that has a lot in common with my simpler version of Tichu.

After one round, I instructed them to play again, but this time they should keep playing until there is only one player left with cards.  That player then gave all of his collected tricks and his hand to the player who went out first.  I then taught them how to score the tricks that they had just collected.  Then I then told them about calling Tichu and bombs before they played another hand.  They could start to see that going out first had an advantage, since you took the cards of the last player, but that without calling Tichu, a player who went out 2nd or 3rd could earn more points than the player who went out first.  They didn’t like that giving away the Dragon gave another player so many points.  (Though they didn’t use the term king maker, this was essentially their complaint).  I told them that if they wanted to keep playing as I had taught the game so far, they could look at the running tally of points and be sure to give the Dragon to the player in last place, or I could teach them the partnership rules.  They didn’t disappoint me!

I had them team up as partners, with one player sitting out.  There was only time for a few hands before the class was up, so I just had them take turns sitting out instead of devising a rule that would balance the points.  But I could imagine a system where you and your partner both scored the same points, but you kept separate running tallies since you would rotate partners.  They liked the added depth of exchanging cards and they started to understand the beauty of the dog, the dragon, not stepping on your partner’s Tichu, and other elements of the game.  Several of them asked where they could buy the game after class.  Oh, and of course they all understood that the themes they were learning in Tichu applied to the materials we were studying in the course.  Tee hee.  I can’t help it if I really had my heart set on a snow day.
I’d rather be gaming,
Valerie Putman

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