San gong: three cards, one digit, several rulebooks

What this game is

三公 (san gong, "three nobles") is also written sam kong or sam gong, and shows up in English as three faces or three pictures. It is a banking game: every player is compared with the banker's hand and never with another player's, so two people can beat the bank in the same round and both get paid.

Structurally it sits between two games this site already covers. The scoring is baccarat's: add the cards, drop the tens digit, chase nine. The three-card shape is zhajinhua's. What it adds is the gong: picture cards, which behave nothing like the rest of the deck.

Fair warning before you read further. San gong has more local variation than any other game on this site, and the single most important rule, how picture cards score, is one of the things that differs. The page names its variant throughout.

Card values and the two common variants

The version described on this page, and the one most commonly played in Malaysia, scores like this:

Add your three cards and keep the last digit. Nine is the best ordinary score and zero the worst. K, 4, 8 totals twelve, which scores 2. A, 3, 5 totals nine and scores 9. 10, J, 7 totals seven and scores 7.

Picture cards do double duty. They contribute nothing to your points, which makes a hand full of them look worthless, right up to the moment you hold three, which is the top hand in the game.

The variant to ask about. Some tables score each picture card as three points rather than zero. Under that rule J, Q, K totals nine, so three pictures still make the strongest hand, but every mixed hand containing a picture card scores differently: K, 4, 8 becomes fifteen, which scores 5 instead of 2. Neither version is wrong, and they are not compatible. Confirm which one is in use before the first deal, because the two rules produce different winners from the same cards.

How tens are treated varies as well. Most tables count a ten as zero, in line with baccarat. A few count it as ten, which amounts to the same thing for the last digit, but not for the tables that also treat tens as gong cards. Ask.

A round, start to finish

1. The bank is set. It rotates, stays with one player, or is bid for, depending on the table.
2. Players stake against the bank.
3. Three cards each are dealt, usually face down, to every player and to the banker.
4. Hands are shown. There is no draw, no discard and no betting round after the deal.
5. Each player is compared with the banker and settled at whatever multiplier the table applies.

The whole thing takes about twenty seconds, which is why san gong is played the way it is: dozens of hands in the time a poker table gets through five.

The hand ranking, strongest first:

1. San gong: three picture cards.
2. Nine points, then eight, seven and so on down.
3. Zero points: the worst hand, called bye or 鳖十 at many tables.

Some tables insert extra hands into that order: three of a kind, or three cards of the same suit, ranked above a plain nine. Like everything else here, that is local.

How often each hand comes up

Three cards from a fifty-two card deck give 22,100 possible hands, few enough to count exhaustively. The figures below assume the zero-scoring variant described above, from a full fresh deck.

The flatness of that table is the whole character of the game. Every score from zero to nine is very nearly equally likely, so the deal is close to picking a digit out of a hat. Only san gong itself is genuinely rare, at about one hand in a hundred — roughly once an hour at a brisk table, which is why the multiplier attached to it is worth asking about.

It also explains why nobody has ever written a san gong strategy worth reading. If ten outcomes are equally likely and you make no decisions, there is nothing to strategise.

Multipliers and ties

Most tables pay more than even money for the strong hands. The common shape is that san gong pays a multiple, a nine may pay a smaller multiple, and everything else settles at one to one. The specific numbers are house rules and vary widely, so no figures are quoted here. Ask, and expect the answer to differ from the last table you played at.

A few tables extend the idea further: a nine made of three cards of the same suit, or a three-of-a-kind, may pay extra. Others have none of that and settle everything at even money.

Ties are the other local rule. The common resolutions are:

• The banker wins all ties. Most common, and a real advantage to the bank.
• The hand with the highest single card wins.
• The tie is broken by suit, commonly spades highest, then hearts, clubs and diamonds.

With every score nearly equally likely, ties are frequent, roughly one comparison in ten. A rule that hands them all to the banker is therefore worth a great deal, and it is the single biggest reason the bank is the seat everybody wants.

The bank

In a game with no decisions, the bank is the only meaningful edge, and where it sits determines who is advantaged.

Being banker means you play one hand against several players' stakes at once, which spreads variance, and on most tables it means you win ties. In home games the bank normally rotates so this evens out. In a house game it does not rotate, and that asymmetry is how the house is paid. There is no commission and no rake in san gong, just the bank's advantage.

Where the bank is bid for, restraint is the whole skill. The bank is worth something; it is not worth an unlimited amount, and paying too much for it is the only way to lose money in this game through a decision rather than through cards.

The checklist before you sit down

Because so little is standard, these five questions cover almost everything that could surprise you:

1. Do picture cards score zero or three?
2. How is a ten counted, and does it count as a gong?
3. What does san gong pay, and does a nine pay a multiple too?
4. Who wins a tie?
5. Does the bank rotate, and if it is bid for, how?

Asking is normal and regulars expect it. Games that travelled by being taught rather than written down have no authority to appeal to afterwards, so the five minutes before the deal is the only time the answers are free. The same is true across every game in our Chinese card games section.

Playing it in Malaysia

Played socially for nothing, san gong is a family card game. Once money is staked it falls under the same restrictions as any other gambling in Malaysia (the Common Gaming Houses Act 1953 and the Betting Act 1953), and gambling is additionally prohibited for Muslims under Sharia law. Online versions are not licensed for the domestic market.

One thing does change when the game moves to a live-dealer stream. The bank is the operator rather than the person beside you, so the tie rule and the multipliers are set by a company you have never met. Judging that company is a separate skill, and what an online casino is as a business is where it starts.

The specific hazard here is pace. Twenty seconds a hand with no decisions to slow you down means an enormous number of settled bets in an evening, and whatever advantage the bank holds is charged on every one of them. Agree the stake, the multipliers and the tie rule before the first deal, and set a limit you will actually stop at. Written for adults, 18 and over.