Chinese collecting game named 夾十 (Kap Shap), translated as “Grasp Tens”. The game is described by Culin. Two players play with one set of Chinese dominoes. The first player gets eight tiles (due to the fact that he cannot take an already exposed tile), the second player gets seven. During the turn, the player may take any previously discarded tile into his hand and discard another one, and then he must get a face-down tile from the deck and then again discard one tile (the first player already has eight tiles in his hands, so this the only exception is when a player first discards a tile, then takes a face-down one, and then discards again). In this way, a player may take two tiles per turn. At any time, when a player has a winning combination of eight tiles in his hands, he lays it out and declares victory.
The winning combination consists of:
- An eye, which is two identical tiles (in other words, a civil pair)
- Three pairs of tiles, where a pair is two tiles whose sum of points is equal to 10 or 20. A tile [4:2] always counts as 3 points.
Many players variant
There is also an option for more people, called Kap Tai Shap which translates as “Grasp Many Tens”. It is played in the same way as Kap Shap with some differences:
- Many players play (from 2 to 20 or even more)
- Lots of decks participate – about 2 decks for every 5 people
- Since there are many decks, the “eye” of identical tiles can also be made of military tiles.
- 10 (the first player) or 9 (all the rest) tiles are dealt.
- A winning combination consists of a “eye” and four pairs, not three.
Rules Analysis
A game was described by Culin, so there are doubts that he described it accurately.
First of all, the fact that players can take two tiles per turn is surprising – this mechanic is more typical of fishing games, all collecting games give the player a choice – either to take an open or a closed tile, but not two at once.
The second strange rule is that the player can take any previously discarded tile, not just the last one, as is usually done in collecting games. No other game offers such an opportunity to take any discarded tile. To be fair, the Western game of Canasta allows you to take the entire deck under certain conditions, but this is still different from the “take whatever you want” rule.
If you think about it, each subsequent player, if playing according to the “pick any tile” rule, gets a better chance of winning than the previous one, because he has the opportunity to choose from more tiles. It’s not that difficult to make a winning hand in Kap Shap if you have a lot of tiles to choose from.
I ran the simulator experimenting with the rules and found that if you play a game of Kap Tai Shap with ten people and four decks, the game is often over in the first round, averagely ending on an eighth player. This is not surprising – the eighth player has the choice to pull any of the seven previously discarded tile. Some players don’t even have a chance to win. It is unlikely that the Chinese did not notice this pattern.
If you add classic rules instead, that is take only one tile, and if discarded is chosen then only the last one, then the game duration is more than doubled and with the same number of players, it takes about two rounds.
With Kap Shap, the difference between the rules is not so striking, because there are only two players, and they are on a more equal ground. With the rules described by Culin, the game lasts an average of three rounds (5-6 moves), and with the classic rules – four (8-9 moves).
I can draw the following conclusion – the game can be played both by Culin and classic rules, but when playing with a larger number of players, the Culin game ends too quickly and it is unlikely that it was played this way, so I advise you to introduce classic rules.
I must point out that a computer simulator is not a person. And people’s game results may vary.
Chinese Dominoes GuPai 