How to play Teen Patti

Teen Patti is a betting game for three to six players, and in Nepal it is called Flash. Three cards each, dealt face down, and you are allowed to bet without ever looking at yours. Three quarters of all hands are high card, so most deals are settled by who keeps paying rather than by who was dealt the best three.

Set a table up

Players: 3 to 6
What you need: 52 cards and a pile of chips
How long: Five deals, and a deal can be over in a minute

What the game is

Three to six players and three cards each, dealt face down from an ordinary 52 card pack. No jokers and nothing wild. The ace is high and the two is low.

Everybody puts the boot into the middle before the deal. That is the ante, and it is also where the betting starts. From then on there is one running stake and every bet is measured against it.

You do not have to look at your cards. A player who leaves them face down is blind, pays half as much to stay in, and cannot be made to turn them over by somebody who has looked. Looking is free and it can wait.

What you decide, every turn, is whether to put more chips in or walk away from the ones already in. That is all of it. No card is ever played and nothing changes hands until the pot does.

Three cards each, face down. Nobody has to turn them over.

The hands, best to worst

Six kinds of hand. Any hand in a higher category beats any hand in a lower one, whatever the cards are, so the worst sequence there is beats the best colour there is.

Trail. Three of a kind, and nothing beats it.

Pure sequence. Three in a row, all one suit. Ace, two, three is the best of them at a standard table here.

Sequence. Three in a row in mixed suits.

Colour. Three of one suit that do not run in order.

Pair. Two of a rank and one other card.

High card. None of the above, and three hands in four look like this.

Inside a category the higher cards win. The higher trail, the higher run, the higher pair and then its odd card. A colour or a high card goes on the top card, then the second, then the third.

Suits never break a tie, so two hands can come out exactly level. Every comparison in the game answers that the same way: whoever paid for the comparison loses it. The exception is the forced showdown at the pot cap, where nobody asked, and there the tied hands split.

The numbers on the ladder are every hand the pack can deal, all 22,100 of them. 52 are trails, 48 are pure sequences, 720 are sequences, 1,096 are colours and 3,744 are pairs. A trail turns up once in 425 deals, which is 424 to 1 against, and a pure sequence is rarer still at 459 to 1.

Read those two figures again. A pure sequence comes up less often than a trail and it ranks below one. Nobody has ever fixed that. The order came down from the English game Three Card Brag and the whole world learned it that way, so the ranking is traditional rather than sorted by probability. Some tables patch it by counting two, three, five in one suit as a pure sequence, which evens up the tally.

The other 16,440 hands, three quarters of everything the pack can deal, are high card. That one number is the game. You will be holding nothing for most of the evening, so will everybody else, and what the two of you do about it is all there is.

How often each hand turns up. The pure sequence is ringed: rarer than the trail above it, and ranked below it anyway.

The deal

Everybody puts the boot in. At a standard table that is 2 chips, and a seat that cannot cover it sits the deal out.
Three cards each, face down, one at a time, starting to the dealer's left.
The stake opens at the boot and the player to the dealer's left acts first.
Round the table each player either puts chips in or packs, until one is left or two are left and one of them pays to compare. The deal then moves one seat along.

Looking at your cards costs nothing and does not use your turn. Do it on your first go, on your fourth, or never. Once you have looked you are seen for the rest of the deal and there is no way back.

A seat that cannot pay the boot is out for the rest of the match. Its chips stay its own and nothing can move them again, because every chip in this game moves through a deal and that seat is not in one. A pile below the ante is out at any real table too.

Five deals make a match by default. The seat with the most chips at the end takes it, and the chips are the score, so there is nothing to add up.

The betting

One number runs round the table and everybody pays against it. There is no calling, nobody matches what the last player put in, and nobody goes all in. This is not poker and the habits do not carry across.

What a bet does to that number depends on whether you have looked. A blind player's bet becomes the next stake. A seen player's bet is halved to make the next stake, which is the same rule read from the other end: seen costs double.

The halving is what lets blind and seen players share a table against a single number. It is also why a seen bet has to be an even number of chips here, since half of an odd bet is not a whole chip.

Four players ante 2 each. The pot is 8 and the stake is 2.
The first player is blind and puts in 2, the least allowed. The stake stays 2 and the pot is 10.
The second is blind and puts in 4, the most a blind player may. A blind bet becomes the stake, so the stake is now 4 and the pot is 14.
The third looks. Seen, so the price is at least twice the stake, 8, and at most four times it, 16. They put in 8. Half of 8 is 4, so the stake stays at 4 and the pot is 22.
The fourth is still blind, so their price is still 4 at a table where the last bet was 8. They put in 4, the stake stays 4, and the pot is 26.

Look at what the third and fourth players paid on the same lap. One had seen three cards and it cost 8. The other had seen nothing and it cost 4. Nobody here is being charged for how good their hand is, only for how much they know about it.

Packing costs nothing more and forfeits everything you have already put in. There is no way to take a chip back out of the pot.

The show

A show ends the deal. It cannot happen until everybody but two has packed, and then one of the two pays for both hands to go face up.

A blind player pays the current stake, whoever they are facing, and does not look at their own three until after paying. Two seen players pay twice the stake.

A seen player facing a blind one may not ask. No price buys it. They keep betting or they pack, and that is the protection which makes staying blind worth anything at all.

The higher hand takes the pot. If the two are exactly level, the player who paid for the show loses, which is worth remembering before buying one with a middling pair.

The other ending is quieter. When everybody else packs, the last player takes the pot and turns nothing over. Those three cards go back in the pack unseen, and nobody at the table ever finds out whether the bet was worth anything.

The one thing a seen player may not do. Looking at your own cards costs you the right to make a blind player turn theirs over.

The sideshow

A sideshow is a private comparison in the middle of a deal, and the app calls it Compare. It is how you get a look at one player without ending the deal for everybody else.

You may ask one person and only one, whoever bet immediately before you. You have to have looked at your own cards and so do they, and you ask at your turn. There is no premium on it. You pay the ordinary seen bet and the comparison itself is free.

They can refuse, and refusing is an ordinary move rather than an admission. A bluff refuses because a comparison would end it. A trail refuses because the pot is still growing. From the outside those two look identical, which is exactly why refusing costs nothing.

If they accept, the hands are compared where only the two of you can see them and the lower one packs. Level counts as lower for whoever asked, the same rule as the show. Everybody else is told who dropped out and nothing more.

With two players left it is a show rather than a sideshow, and a table can switch the sideshow off altogether.

Who you may ask. Not the player sitting next to you: the one who bet immediately before you, which after a couple of them have packed is somewhere further round.

The limits

Three limits sit on top of the game. All three come from apps rather than from tradition, and a table can turn all three off. A deal still ends without them, because every bet is at least one chip, nobody can top up, and a seat that cannot meet its minimum has to pack.

Blind turns, four by default. Once you have bet blind that many times you have to look before you can bet again, and looking makes you seen, so the blind show goes with it. The protection runs out along with the turns.

The most in one bet, 32 chips by default. It is a ceiling on a seen bet. Because a seen bet is halved to make the next stake, its real effect is to hold the stake at 16, and a blind bet is held to the same 16 because a blind bet becomes the stake. Without it, a table of blind players can push the stake somewhere no seen player can afford to follow.

The pot cap, 256 chips by default. When the pot reaches it, everybody still in turns their cards over and the best hand takes the lot. It is the only point in the game where more than two hands are compared. A tie there splits the pot rather than punishing anybody, because nobody asked for that comparison.

So the limits keep a deal from running long. They are not what keeps it from running forever, and a table with all three switched off is playing the game as Pagat describes it.

The settings

Teen Patti is a house rules game and the game's own page carries all of them. Set them before you start, because a table keeps the rules it was made with.

One of the settings is a real argument rather than a preference. Ace, two, three is a sequence at every table in the world, and whether it is the best sequence or second behind ace, king, queen splits the sources down the middle. Pagat puts it top, and so does Three Card Brag, the English game this one descends from. Wikipedia puts it second, and so do the big phone apps, one of which manages to say both things on a single page. This app opens with ace, two, three at the top, and the setting is there to turn it over.

Turning it over leaves the odds above unchanged. Ace, two, three counts as a run under either setting, so the six totals stay where they are and only the order of the twelve runs moves. There are tables that do not count it as a run at all, and those are playing with eleven runs and different numbers, but that is not one of the choices here.

Setting	Standard	What it changes
The best sequence	Ace, two, three	Where the ace, two, three run sits: at the top of the twelve, or second behind ace, king, queen. Both settings keep it as a run, so neither one changes how often a sequence is dealt.
Players	4	Seats at the table, from 3 to 6. Three is the floor, below which blind and seen has nothing to work on. More seats means a bigger pot and a longer wait for your turn.
Boot	2	What everybody antes before the deal, and the stake the betting opens at. Every other price in the game is a multiple of it, so raising the boot raises the whole table.
Chips each	100	The pile each seat starts the match with. It is the score as well as the stake, and nobody can top up.
Turns you may stay blind	4	Turns you may keep betting without looking. Set it to nought and you can stay blind all deal, which is the traditional game and a strong way to play it.
Most in one bet	32	A hard ceiling on one seen bet, on top of the four times rule. Nought takes the ceiling off and lets the stake climb as far as the chips allow.
Pot cap	256	The pot at which everybody still in is forced to show. Nought means a deal runs until all but one have packed or somebody pays for a show.
Comparing with the player before you	On	Whether you may ask the player who bet before you for a private comparison. Off leaves the show as the only way any hand is ever seen.
Lowest hand wins	Off	Lowball. The whole ranking turns over, so a high card beats a pair and a trail is the worst thing you can hold. Nothing about the betting changes, and the chips still count upwards.
Deals in a match	5	Deals in a match. The seat with the most chips at the end takes it, so a longer match gives a bad start more room to come back from.
Difficulty	Medium	How long a bot stays blind, how much it reads into who has looked, and how often it just gets it wrong. An easy bot turns its cards over the moment they land and plays three moves in ten at random. A hard one pays for every blind turn the table allows, which at these settings is worth about a hundred chips a match on its own.

The chips, and the money

Cards come out at Dashain and Tihar. A cloth on the floor, whoever is home that week, and a game that runs until somebody has to go and cook. Playing them at that time of year is ordinary enough that Nepali writing on the subject calls it auspicious.

Teen Patti is also, in every source that describes it, a gambling game. Pagat's first line about it says so and nobody else disagrees. This version is not one, and saying that plainly is better than leaving a reader to work it out.

What families play for at home is matchsticks, small coins, or nothing at all. The chips here are the matchstick pile. Everybody starts the match with the same hundred, they move around between the seats for five deals, and then they are gone.

The chips buy nothing. No purchase, no top-up, no cash-out, no rate of exchange to anything. They are not your account coins either, and nothing that happens at this table touches your balance.

Nepali law draws its line at the money rather than at the game. Gambling there means staking property on chance in order to win or lose it, and the police put it in plainer words: they are not out looking for people playing cards for fun. A table of matchsticks at Tihar is on the ordinary side of that line, and so is this one.

This is also not the casino game. Live Teen Patti, the table played against a house for real stakes, is a different product that happens to share a name.

The name

In Nepal this game is Flash. फ्लास, written Falash and Flush as well, and that is the word you will hear at a table in Kathmandu. Nepali Wikipedia uses it in its own list of Nepali card games, next to kalbirek, jut, das patti and kaat.

Teen Patti, तीन पत्ती, is the Indian name and it means three cards. Nepali Wikipedia has no article under it at all. Everybody in Nepal will know what you mean, and it is the name on this app because it is what people search for.

Almost none of the betting vocabulary has a settled Nepali form. Blind, seen, chaal, pack, show and boot are all borrowed at a Nepali table, and not one of them turns up in a written Nepali source for this game. So the Nepali side of this app describes them instead of borrowing them: नहेरी for playing without having looked, हेरेर for playing after, छोड्नुहोस् for packing, तुलना for a sideshow.

Playing it better

Stay blind. It is half price, it cannot be shown down against you, and you were going to be holding a high card anyway.
Look when the stake has climbed far enough that a blind turn is expensive on its own terms. Curiosity is not a reason.
A pair is a good hand here. Only a quarter of deals produce one or better, so waiting for a sequence means waiting out the match.
Watch who looked and when. Somebody who looked and then paid the minimum twice has told you something. Somebody who never looked has told you nothing.
Refuse sideshows. A refusal reveals nothing, and being the player who always accepts is what makes your acceptances worth reading.
The chips already in the pot stopped being yours when you put them in. The only question in front of you is whether the next ones are worth spending.

The words

Flash (फ्लास): This game, in Nepal. Falash and Flush are the same word written differently. It is the one piece of this game's vocabulary with real written evidence behind it in Nepali.
Teen Patti (तीन पत्ती): Three cards. The Indian name, understood everywhere in Nepal, and the one the app is listed under because it is what people type into a search box.
Taas (तास): Playing cards, and the activity of playing them. Taas khelne is to play cards, whatever the game on the cloth is.
Patti (पत्ती): One card. Three of them make a hand here, which is where the Indian name comes from.
Dau (दाउ): A chip, and the stake laid with it. Where the English here says chips, the Nepali side of the app says dau.
Boot (सुरु दाउ): The ante everybody pays before the deal, and the stake the betting opens at. Boot is the English word the apps use. Nepali has no word of its own for it, so this one says opening stake.
Naheri (नहेरी): Without having looked, which this page calls blind. There is no Nepali word for the betting sense, so the app describes the thing instead.
Herera (हेरेर): Having looked, which this page calls seen. It is the state you cannot get back out of once you are in it.
Chaal (चाल): A bet, at a Hindi table and in most apps. चाल is a Nepali word for a move, and its use as this game's betting term is written down nowhere in Nepali, so the app says put in.
Rang (रङ): The suit. Worth knowing because the Colour hand is never called rang on its own in Nepali, which would read as suit. The app says एउटै रङ, one and the same suit, and means the hand.
Jodi (जोडी): A pair. Nepali spells it जोडी. Hindi puts a dot under the ड, and that dot is the commonest way a Nepali page gives away that it was translated out of Hindi. It is nowhere in this app.
Tulana (तुलना): A comparison, which is what the app calls the sideshow. There is no Nepali word for the thing itself, and a comparison is what it is.
Juwa (जुवा): Gambling. The word Nepali law uses, and the law defines it by the staking of property on chance rather than by which game is on the cloth.

Every rule on this page is the one the app plays by. Change any of them on the game's own page before you start.