Open Face Chinese Poker Pineapple Strategy
- Open Face Chinese Poker Pineapple Strategy For Beginners
- Open Face Chinese Poker Rules
- Online Open Face Chinese Poker
Table Of Contents
Introduction
Open-Face Chinese Poker with 2-7 in the Middle — a.k.a. “2-7 OFC” or “Deuce Pineapple” — is a turn-based card game that is played heads up, or sometimes three-handed. Players take turns, drawing cards and placing them into three separate poker hands. Each of these hands is played face up, meaning that players can see all of the cards that have been played, and these cards can’t be moved between each player’s three poker hands once they have been placed.
The “Deuce” designation means that the middle poker hand is played according to the rankings used in 2-7 lowball, while the other two hands are played as regular “high” poker hands. The game might sound complicated, but it really isn’t.
Objective
Pineapple OFC is a derivative of standard open-face Chinese poker with Fantasyland, the rules for which can be found here. Just as in regular OFC, the players get several cards in turn, and place them face-up until they make a 13-card hand, consisting of a 'top,' 'middle,' and 'bottom' row of three, five, and five cards, respectively. OFC No Mercy Little Guide Part 3: Pineapple's Variations Welcome back open-face Chinese poker fans! Happy to be writing this third part of my own little OFC guide! So far we’ve discussed the history of Chinese poker, the appearance and popularity of the open-face format, and how the game is scored including royalties. Open-Face Chinese Poker was discovered by the online poker community in 2012. Back then, as a piece in Bluff Magazine points out, most of the material on the game online was in Finnish. After some digging and posting on the 2+2 Forum, people online found out that OFC was in fact played in Finnish land casinos – although some players there. The only site we’re aware of offering open-face chinese poker online for real money is TonyBet. Click here to sign up at TonyBet, which offers both OFC and Pineapple OFC. Play OFC or POFC at TonyBet. The most popular app for playing open-face Chinese online is the Chinese Open Face Poker app (available for iPhone & iPad here). May 10, 2014 - Today's Open Face Chinese Poker hand is heads up Pineapple-OFC. For complete rules and scoring specifics see our Rules Page. Open Face Odds observes variable-value Fantasyland for Pineapple, so front-row QQ qualifies for 13-card FL, KK front is 14-card FL, and AA+ is 15-card FL. STARTING FIVE CARDS: 4 ⋄ 7 ♥ J ♠ 3 ♠ 5 ⋄.
The objective of 2-7 Open-Face Chinese is to place 13 cards into three hands: a five-card bottom hand, a five-card middle hand, and a three-card top hand.
As noted, the game plays just like high-only Pineapple OFC, except with the middle played as a 2-7 lowball hand. This means that your bottom hand is a regular five-card poker hand (with flushes, straight and full houses), the top hand is a three-card high hand (including pairs, trips, but no three-card straights or flushes), while the middle hand must contain five low cards with no pairs, no straights, and no flushes. The lower these cards the better.
Taking Turns and Discarding
The game is called Open-Face Chinese Poker (or OFC for short) because you’re building these three hands face up a few cards at a time.
As with all Open-Face games, you start by getting dealt five cards and place them all. On subsequent turns (following the procedure used in Pineapple OFC), you get three cards face down and place two of them in any of the available rows (bottom, middle or top).
The unused card then gets discarded face down. Discards are out of play, and not shuffled back into the deck, and your opponents are not allowed to see your discards. Therefore there are only enough cards in a deck to play Deuce Pineapple OFC either heads-up or three-handed.
Fantasyland and 'Super Fantasyland'
If you make a qualifying hand with kings or better up top, or a wheel — 2x3x4x5x7x — in the middle, then on the next hand you enter Fantasyland. Just like in high-only Pineapple OFC, in Fantasyland you get 14 cards right away and set 13 of them into three rows face down while discarding one. Your opponents then play out their hands normally, and the result is scored against your hand.
You can stay in Fantasyland, earning another round in this advantageous position, by making a big enough bonus. For Deuce Pineapple you need either trips (three of a kind) on top, a wheel low in the middle, or quads (four of a kind) or better on the bottom to remain in Fantasyland.
Meanwhile, in a twist from high-only Pineapple OFC, you can also earn a 15-card “Super Fantasyland” round by qualifying for Fantasyland twice in the same normal hand. Here, for example, the player qualifies for Super Fantasyland by making both aces on top and a wheel in the middle:
This double-bonus is rare, but well worth it. If you stay in Fantasyland, “Super” or otherwise, you get a normal 14-card Fantasyland hand.
Qualification and Scoring
To make a qualifying hand, your top hand must be no better (as a normal poker hand) than your bottom hand. And your middle low hand must be at least a ten-low, meaning that your biggest card is no higher than a ten without a pair, a straight, or a flush. As with other Chinese Poker variants, a disqualified or “fouled” hand automatically loses every row.
The three rows are scored against your opponent with the winner of each row getting +1 point. If you win all three rows, this also results in a +3 scoop bonus. In addition to winning, scooping, and possible Fantasyland qualification, you also get points for any bonuses earned by a qualifying hand, even if that hand loses the row.
Open Face Chinese Poker Pineapple Strategy For Beginners
Bonuses for the bottom hand start with a straight, the low middle hand with a nine-low, and the top row with a pair of sixes. Full bonuses are listed here:
Conclusion
There you have it. Welcome to Open-Face Chinese Poker with 2-7 in the Middle — or “Deuce Pineapple”.
OFC rules have been contributed by Nikolai Yakovenko. Known as 'Googles,' Yakovenko is originally from Moscow, Russia and is now a poker player and software developer residing in Brooklyn, New York. Yakovenko has made both World Series of Poker and World Poker Tour final tables. Meanwhile after several years at Google New York working on ranking algorithms, he's been developing independent software projects ever since. He also helped create the ABC Open-Face Chinese Poker iPhone App. You can follow Yakovenko on Twittter at @ivan_bezdomny.
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