Fishing games

Fishing games are games that have no obvious counterparts among European games, but are quite common in Asia. The Korean card game Hwatu itself (the same as the Japanese Hanafuda), which displaced the Chinese domino from Korea, is also a fishing game.

The essence of the fishing game is quite simple – there are domino tiles on the table, which are considered to be a lake, or fish in a lake. And the player, using tiles from his hand or from the deck, “catches” fish according to certain, usually quite simple, rules. If he cannot catch a fish with his tile, then he puts this tile in the “lake”, and now this tile can be “caught” by another player. Often, a move consists of two parts – at first a player uses a tile from his hand, and then – a tile from the deck. In this way, a player can either catch a fish twice in a turn, or release a fish into the lake twice, or catch a fish once and release one fish.

In fishing games, a lot depends on luck, as the second part of the turn depends entirely on a random tile drawn from the deck. The two games – Tiu-U (Catching Fish) and Shi Wu Hu (Fifteen Lakes) are classic fishing games and are similar to each other, they can even be considered variants of the same game. Tsung Shap (Disputing for Tens) stands a bit apart. Besides, according to the classical rules, it almost lacks the element of skill and almost everything depends on luck. It seems that only the Fifteen Lakes game still has a living tradition.