The tiles in the civilian suit go in the following order – from highest to lowest:
[6:6] > [1:1] > [4:4] > [3:1] > [5:5] > [3:3] > [2:2] > [6:5] > [6:4] > [6:1] > [5:1]
[6:6] is often referred to as “Heaven”, [1:1] as “Earth”, [4:4] as “Man” and [3:1] as “Harmony”.
The tiles in the military suit go in this order – from highest to lowest:
[6:3] = [5:4] > [6:2] = [5:3] > [5:2] = [4:3] > [4:2] > [4:1] > [3 :2] > [2:1]
An explanation of such a hierarchy is given in the Domino Symbolism section.
It is clear that in the civilian suit each tile has its own pair and this can be used in the game.
And what to do with the military? The Chinese solved this issue as follows – all military tiles are paired by the number of points. There are “Nines” ([6:3] and [5:4]), “Eights” ([6:2] and [5:4]), “Sevens” ([5:2] and [4:3]) and “Fives” ([4:1] and [3:2]). Tiles [4:2] and [2:1], which do not pair with anything, remain redundant. Since they do not pair with anything, they were paired and this pair is called “Supreme”. This means that while the tiles are divided into two suits – civil and military, the pairs are divided into three suits – civil, military and the supreme. And there is a single pair in the last suit. In some games, it can’t beat anything, but it can’t be beaten either. In some games, this is simply the highest value.
The Koreans solved the issue of pairing military tiles differently. Three pairs in them have a common number in combination with a two or a three: [6:3][6:2], [5:3][5:2], [4:3][4:2]. One pair that in total gives the same number of points: [4:1][3:2] and a pair according to the “whatever is left” principle: [5:4][2:1]. One of the pairs is “bullish” ([6:3][6:2]), which we already met in the game Battle of the Bulls.
Since dominoes practically died out in Korea and Korean military pairs remained in history, so most of games use Chinese pairs. In all the Korean games I’ve come across, the seniority of tiles and pairs didn’t play any role, so hereafter I’ll only talk about Chinese pairs.
The seniority of civil pairs corresponds to the seniority of the tiles themselves, that is, the highest pair is [6:6][6:6] and the lowest is [5:1][5:1].
The seniority of military pairs also corresponds to the seniority of the tiles themselves, but these two tiles are an exception: [4:2] and [2:1]. When used alone their numerical values are 6 and 3 respectively, meaning [4:2] is below the sevens but above the fives, and [2:1] is the lowest tile among the military tiles. But when combined in a pair, these tiles do not belong to the military suit and stand aside as a Supreme Pair.
This photo can help guide you by the seniority of the tiles and what suits exist:
Armed with this knowledge, we can play the Tien Gow trick game.
Chinese Dominoes GuPai 