Your First 3 Kaki Hand

Setting Up For Three

The set is smaller: 84 tiles. Tong (Dots) 1 to 9 is the only suit, four of each. Add four of each wind and each dragon, then the bonus tiles: four flowers, four seasons, four animals and four face tiles. Last come the four Fei (飛), the jokers.

Three players sit East, South and West. North’s side of the table stays empty, though the North tiles still play. The Dealer always sits East and takes 14 tiles; the other two take 13.

Draw a bonus tile, in the deal or later, and it never stays in your hand. Lay it face up in front of you and take a replacement from the back of the wall. The last seven tiles are never drawn.

One Suit Changes Everything

With only Tong in play, almost every tile connects to something, and hands come together quickly. Flushes are easy too, so they’re worth much less than at a four-player table.

The honours you keep are the ones that score. Dragon sets count for anyone. East is always the Round Wind, so an East set counts for everyone, twice for the Dealer. South or West counts only for whoever sits there, and since nobody sits North, a North set counts for all three of you.

Fei, And When To Sink One

A Fei is any tile you like, while it’s in your hand. It can fill one place in a Chow, one or two places in a Pong, or half your Eye or all of it. Every set keeps at least one real tile, and a Fei never goes into a Kong.

You can claim with one, but a set you show holds only one Fei. If two players call Pong on the same tile, the one using real tiles gets it. Later, on your turn, swap the real tile into a shown set and take the Fei home again.

You can also throw a Fei, but nobody can claim it. It goes among your bonus tiles, worth 1 fan, and you draw a replacement from the back of the wall and discard again. That’s sinking a Fei. Do it when that fan is what lifts your hand to the minimum, or when a fresh tile would help more than the joker.

Claims And Your Turn

Draw, then discard. You may Chow only the tile thrown by the player just before you; anyone may Pong or Kong it. If two players want the same tile, a win beats a Kong, a Kong beats a Pong and a Pong beats a Chow.

Straight after a Chow or Pong, keep every tile of that set for the turn: Chow a 6 with 4 and 5, and you may not throw a 4, 5 or 6. This table has no memory, either: a tile someone let go a moment ago can still win for them now.

Winning: Five Means Five

A complete hand is four sets and an Eye, and it needs 5 fan to win. Bonus tiles carry much of that: each animal is 1 fan, each face 1 fan, your own flower and season 1 fan each, and the 4s count for everyone.

The Fei counts as the third Red, the tile that scores best. That makes 5 fan exactly. Without the face tile the same hand falls short, and you’d have to let the winning tile go.

The limit is 10 fan. Some limit hands come from nowhere: a win with no bonus tiles at all, all four Fei, or a win on the last tile or the last discard. Every hand and its fan is on the 3 Kaki table guide.

Settling Up

1. The win. Points rise evenly with each fan from the minimum, then jump at the limit, which pays three times what the minimum does. On a discard the shooter pays the hand’s value and the other player half. By Ji Mo, both pay it in full.
2. Extra Fei. Each loser pays the winner for every Fei the winner holds beyond their own, counting Fei in the hand, in sets or sunk.
3. The losers square up. Each counts their scoring bonus tiles, complete families and scoring honour sets, plus their Fei at double. The lower total pays the difference.

Kongs and complete bonus families have already been paid the moment they were made, and a drawn hand settles nothing. One trap to remember: throw the third dragon to a player showing two dragon sets, and you pay their whole win, both shares. Then the winner deals the next hand, so everyone’s seat, and their own flower, moves along.