The benefits for this include the obvious potential for making (or stopping) a Tichu bid and scoring any point cards collected in the tricks of the player who went out last, but, perhaps most importantly, it also sets your team up for the possibility of going out first and second (or, “getting a Slam”). Regardless of whether or not Tichu has been called, having one member of your team go out first will always be paramount. It is also tied into, and re-enforcing of, the partnership aspect of the game. The scoring, in particular, is excellently engineered to sustain tension and drive players to shed cards throughout the hand. Are you positive you want to pass them the Dog and help yourself but also risk destroying what might otherwise have been an overwhelmingly strong Tichu hand for your partner? Perhaps you should keep the Dog and pass that Dragon of yours over to your partner instead? This constant pressure, however, also serves to magnify the burst of relief or joy you will feel at the end of an especially well played hand. It continues into the decision over which card should be passed to which player and what signal you wish to convey to your partner about the strength or weakness of your hand. And it begins even before all the cards are dealt, when you are offered the opportunity to gamble, on behalf of you and your partner no less, on whether you will be the first player to void their hand (i.e. Almost all of your decisions are tempered by this consideration not only how this choice will affect yourself, but of how it will affect your partner. Partnership play, by its nature, increases poignancy as you and your partner’s fate become inextricably bound and you worry from beginning to end whether it will be your decisions that cost you both the hand or, worse, the game.

Amongst these, however, partnerships are the linch-pin each of the others ties back to this in some way. And, while the card play and scoring of the parent game are sufficiently and tactically interesting in their own right, each of these additions, in their way, serve to increase the number of decision points and, consequently, the feelings of tension you will have throughout the game.

Tichu is a climbing card game (in the same family as “President” or “Asshole”) descended from Zheng Fen with a few less combinations and different “bombs” but with partnerships, card passing, four special cards, and extra scoring.

Tichu cards alternative design