Fight the Landlord

How to play

1. How does the bidding work?: The deal starts the moment the page loads: 54 cards (both jokers included) go out 17 apiece, with three left face down in the middle. When it is your turn you bid 1, 2 or 3 — or pass — and a bid only counts if it beats the standing one. The highest bidder becomes the landlord, takes those three cards for a 20-card hand, and the winning bid becomes the base score.
2. How do you select and play cards?: Drag a finger across the cards you want; every card you touch lifts clear of its neighbours. Double-tap a card to grab all cards of that rank at once. A bar above your hand names the combination you are holding and says whether it beats the table, and the play button lights up or greys out to match — when it greys out it tells you exactly why.
3. How do you win a round?: The landlord plays alone against the two farmers, who win together. Whichever side empties a hand first takes the round. Every bomb and every rocket doubles the multiplier, and a spring doubles it again; the round score is the base score times the multiplier. Scores describe that round only — there is no currency and no balance.

Rules & variants

Fight the Landlord basics: a 54-card deck including both jokers, three players. Bidding decides the landlord, who picks up the three-card kitty for a hand of 20; the two farmers hold 17 each and play as a team. The landlord leads, then play passes anticlockwise: each player either beats the standing play with the same kind of combination or passes. The first side to empty a hand wins.

Card ranking in Dou Dizhu: red joker > black joker > 2 > A > K > Q > J > 10 > 9 > 8 > 7 > 6 > 5 > 4 > 3. Suits are meaningless, so two cards of the same rank are completely interchangeable. Runs — straights, consecutive pairs and airplanes — only span 3 through A; the 2 and both jokers never appear in a run.

All 13 combinations supported here: single, pair, trio, trio with a single, trio with a pair, straight (5+ cards), consecutive pairs (3+ pairs), airplane (2+ consecutive trios), airplane with singles, airplane with pairs, four with two (two loose cards or two pairs), bomb, and rocket. Trios are compared by the trio's rank and fours-with-two by the quad's rank; straights and consecutive-pair runs only compare against runs of the same length.

Following a play: you must match the combination type and the card count, and rank higher. Bombs and rockets are the exceptions — a bomb beats anything that is not a bomb and bombs compare by rank, while a rocket (both jokers) beats everything including bombs. Once two players pass in a row the table clears and the last player to put cards down leads again. You cannot pass when it is your lead.

Bidding and the base score: this site uses the bid-points system. On your turn you bid 1, 2 or 3 or pass, and a bid must strictly beat the standing one; a bid of 3 ends the auction immediately. The winning bid is the base score. If all three players pass the hand is redealt, up to three times, after which the opening bidder is made landlord at a base score of 1.

Multipliers and spring: the multiplier starts at 1 and doubles for every bomb and every rocket played, by anyone. A spring — the landlord runs out while neither farmer ever managed a play — doubles it again, and so does an anti-spring, where the farmers win and the landlord only ever landed the opening lead. The round score is base × multiplier, and it never accumulates into a balance.

Practical strategy, four rules of thumb: count how many separate plays it will take to empty your hand rather than looking at raw card strength; save 2s and jokers to break the plays that matter instead of leading with them; as a farmer, let a partner who is running the table keep going rather than trumping your own side; and track only three things — the jokers, the 2s and the one rank missing from your straight. The counter panel on screen already keeps that tally.

How it differs from related shedding games: Fight the Landlord is three-handed with a kitty and an explicit landlord-versus-farmers split. Big Two is four-handed and compares suits; Tichu partners two against two with its own special cards; Pusoy and Zheng Shangyou use different deals again. This page implements one ruleset only — no four-player variant, no wild cards, and no doubling, super-doubling or open-hand betting, which are wagering structures this site does not build.

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