Perhaps they lay down a pair, or two consultative pairs, or a three of a kind or a run of a given length. Each trick a player leads and they lay down a set the others must better. The entire deck is dealt out to the four players and then the player with the 3 of hearts leads the first trick. Zeng Fen is a ladder game, a form of trick taking popular in China and found in President/The Great Delmutti. Taking the basic card play, Hostettler has added partnership and bidding play found in many western trick takers. The game is perhaps an east meets west as the core is the Chinese card game Zheng Fen. Tichu is a four player partnership card game, marketed as a Chinese game but designed by a Swiss, Urs Hosteller. You either go through the layers of strategic depth or pass on after the first glance. There is no story you can just drop in for once every 6 months, there are no systems you can learn to grok and then discard for the new hotness.

Other games might define a time in a persons life, but abstracts if they are encountered in more than passing have to take this role. Tichu was a Friday night fixture with my Spanish friends in a fluorescent lit kitchen, we had cheap beer, a white chipped MDF table and the Tichu tin, and we were completely addicted for a season. I played Go between weighing sediment samples in the lab during my masters degree, Xianqgi when I went to China and against the Chinese students I knew. A lot of abstract games are a definitive of a point in my life, like a favourite record that reminds you of when you were 16.

Tichu history