Vietnamese Card Games: Every Major Game, Deck and Rule Set

If you have watched a Vietnamese family play cards at Tết and had no idea what was happening, this page is the map. Vietnam has a deep card-playing culture — some games borrowed, some entirely its own — and English-language coverage of it is thin, usually a paragraph per game on a travel blog.

Two things trip up English speakers more than anything else, and both are worth settling before you read any individual guide:

1. These games do not all use the same deck. Four of the most culturally important ones are not played with the 52-card pack at all. They use traditional decks of 32, 100, 112 and 120 cards that look nothing like Western playing cards.
2. Most of them have several names — a Vietnamese name, sometimes a regional variant name, and often an English or diaspora name that sounds unrelated. Tiến Lên is “Thirteen”. Mậu Binh is “Chinese Poker”. Bài Tấn is the Russian game Durak.

Every Vietnamese card game at a glance

The quick reference. Player counts are the usual range — most of these games are flexible, and house rules vary considerably from table to table.

The four decks that are not a deck of cards

This is the part that surprises people. A Vietnamese card cabinet may contain four completely different things.

The Western 52-card pack (bài tây)

Most modern Vietnamese card games use the same pack you already own — Tiến Lên, Sâm Lốc, Phỏm, Mậu Binh, Liêng, Bài Cào and Cát Tê all deal from it. Bài tây means, literally, “Western cards”.

The Tam Cúc deck — 32 cards

Tam Cúc uses its own small deck of 32 narrow cards printed with the pieces from cờ tướng, Chinese chess: tướng (general), sĩ (advisor), tượng (elephant), xe (chariot), pháo (cannon), mã (horse) and tốt (soldier), in red and black. There are no suits and no numbers in the Western sense — the ranking is the chess hierarchy.

The Tổ Tôm deck — 120 cards

Tổ Tôm is played with a deck of 120 long, narrow cards printed with Chinese characters and small woodblock figures, in three suits: Văn, Vạn and Sách. It has a reputation as the hardest traditional Vietnamese card game, and the terminology alone takes a few sessions to absorb. It also has a genuine curiosity attached to it: the figures on the cards are drawn in Japanese dress, which is not what most players expect on a Vietnamese deck.

The Chắn deck — 100 cards from the tổ tôm pack

Chắn is not a separate deck so much as a reduced one. It is played with the tổ tôm cards, with certain cards removed, leaving 100. Chắn is the more approachable of the pair — fewer cards, tighter rules and faster rounds — which is why far more people play it than play full tổ tôm. The usual format is chắn bí tứ: four players, dealt 19 cards each, with the dealer taking a twentieth.

The Tứ Sắc deck — 112 cards in four colours

Tứ Sắc means “four colours”, and that is exactly what the deck is: 112 small, very narrow paper cards printed with cờ tướng characters and divided into green, yellow, white and red. It belongs to central and southern Vietnam, and it rewards memory and careful hand-building more than luck.

The four families of Vietnamese card game

Grouping the games by what you are actually trying to do is more useful than grouping them by region, because it tells you which ones will feel familiar once you have learned one.

Shedding games — get rid of your hand first

Tiến Lên is the one to learn first, and the one most likely to be on the table. Four players, thirteen cards each, and the whole 52-card deck is dealt out; the winner is whoever empties their hand first. It is called Thirteen in English, and Viet Cong or VC in Vietnamese-American circles — a different game in practice, because the American form uses noticeably different rules. There are also two Vietnamese regional rulesets: the southern game (Tiến Lên Miền Nam) is the common one, while the northern game requires runs and sets to be the same suit or colour, which changes how you build a hand from the first deal. Our full Tien Len rules guide covers the combinations, the bomb rules and the variant conflicts in detail.

Sâm Lốc is Tiến Lên’s quicker cousin, popular in the north. Same deck, same objective, but only ten cards each and two to five players, so rounds finish fast and the swings are sharper.

Melding games — build valid sets

Phỏm (also called Tá Lả) is Vietnam’s rummy. You draw and discard to build valid melds, and you want to finish holding as little unmelded deadwood as possible. Unlike Tiến Lên you are not racing to empty your hand — you are managing what is left in it.

Tổ Tôm, Chắn and Tứ Sắc are melding games too, but on their own traditional decks. All three revolve around assembling valid combinations and declaring a completed hand. Tổ Tôm and Chắn share the same cards and the same core idea; Tứ Sắc runs on colour-matching across its four-colour pack.

Showdown games — best hand wins

These are the fast gambling games, and they are the ones most associated with money changing hands at Tết.

Liêng deals three cards and compares hands; two to six players. Bài Cào (also ba cây, “three cards”) also deals three, but it is simpler still — you total the cards and the higher score wins. Bài Cào is worth being plain about: it involves no decisions at all once the cards are dealt, so it is pure chance. Mậu Binh, known internationally as Chinese Poker, is the most strategic of the group: you get thirteen cards and must split them into three separate hands, each compared against the same opponent’s, using poker rankings. Xì Tố is a Vietnamese stud poker played on a reduced 32-card deck, and Xì Dách is the local relative of blackjack.

Trick-taking and attack–defend games

Tam Cúc is the northern Tết game, played on its 32-card chess deck, traditionally on a mat while the bánh chưng boils. Cát Tê has an unusual objective for a trick-taking game: you do not need to win the most tricks — the winner is whoever takes the last one, and the earlier rounds mostly decide who is still in contention for it. Bài Tấn is the odd one out entirely: it is the Vietnamese version of Durak, the Russian attack-and-defend game — played in Vietnam on an ordinary 52-card deck, with each turn having one player attacking and another defending rather than everyone playing into a common round.

The dice games played alongside them

Two of the games you will see at a Vietnamese Tết table are not card games at all, and they are worth knowing because they usually share the table.

Bầu cua cá cọp is the six-symbol dice game played on a printed mat — gourd, crab, shrimp, fish, rooster and deer — and it is probably the single most recognisable Tết gambling game in Vietnam. Our guide to bầu cua rules and odds works through the payouts and the real probabilities. Xóc đĩa is the other one: a dealer shakes four two-sided discs under a bowl and players bet on how many land red face up. Our xóc đĩa rules and odds guide works through all sixteen possible arrangements and the house edge on each bet, which ranges from 1.5% to 37.5% on the same table.

Which one should you learn first?

If you want to join in at a family gathering, learn Tiến Lên. It is the most widely played, the rules are quick to pick up, and every table has someone who can correct you. If you already know rummy, Phỏm will feel immediately familiar. If you know poker, start with Mậu Binh, where your hand-ranking knowledge transfers directly.

Tổ Tôm is not a good first game and nobody should pretend otherwise — an unfamiliar 120-card deck, Chinese characters, five players and a dense vocabulary is a steep start. Chắn is the sensible way into that family.

House rules come first

One warning that applies to every game on this page: Vietnamese card games are governed by house rules to an unusual degree. Scoring, penalties, whether particular combinations are legal, what happens on the final card — all of it varies by region, by family and sometimes by table. There is no national rulebook for most of these games. Settle the disputed points out loud before the first deal, not in the middle of a hand.

Play responsibly

Many of these games are traditionally played for money, usually small amounts, as part of a social occasion. Treat that as entertainment with a cost attached rather than a way to earn anything — the games with the shortest rules, like bài cào, are also the ones with no skill component whatever. Betting services are for adults aged 18 or over. If gambling has stopped being fun, BeGambleAware and Gambling Therapy both offer free, confidential help.

Our Vietnamese-language guides go into far more depth on the individual games — including tổ tôm, chắn, tam cúc and tứ sắc, which have no full English equivalent anywhere.