Big Two
Also known as Big 2, Big Deuce, Deuces, Choh Dai Di, Chor Dai Di, Dai Di, Pusoy Dos, Capsa Banting
- Players
- 2-4 players (best with 4)
- Deck
- 1 standard deck (52 cards), jokers removed
- Time
- 20-45 minutes
- Difficulty
- Medium
- Category
- Shedding
Setup
Use the whole 52-card pack with the jokers taken out. Two things about this deck have to be fixed in your head before you sort your hand, and both cut against ordinary card sense.
The rank order climbs 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, jack, queen, king, ace, 2. The two is therefore the best card and the three the worst, which is where the game gets its name. On top of that, suits are ranked as well, and the ranking is live in every comparison the game makes: spades over hearts, hearts over clubs, clubs over diamonds. Between them, rank and suit give all 52 cards a single unbroken order with no ties anywhere in it, running from the three of diamonds at the very bottom to the two of spades at the very top.
Choose the first dealer however you like; after that whoever won the last hand deals the next. Deal and play both run anticlockwise, so the cards go out to the dealer's right — American and Indonesian tables commonly reverse that and play clockwise, which changes nothing except who sits downstream of whom. Give thirteen cards to each player, one at a time. Four players use the entire pack. Three take seventeen each, with the fifty-second card turned in the middle and added to the hand of whoever holds the three of diamonds, so nothing goes missing from the count; two-handed practice varies between seventeen, twenty-one and thirteen cards each, and there the remainder is set aside unseen.
Whoever holds the three of diamonds opens every deal, and their opening play must contain that card, either on its own or inside a pair, a triple or a five-card hand built around it. Where cards have been set aside and the three of diamonds is not in play, the opening belongs to whoever was dealt the lowest card that is — lowest rank first, lowest suit between equal ranks — and that card has to appear in the opening play in the same way. Many groups instead apply the lowest-card rule only to the first deal of a session and let the winner of each hand open the next, free to lead any legal play at all. Agree which convention is in force before the first shuffle.
Play
Every play is one of exactly four sizes: a single card, two cards of the same rank, three cards of the same rank, or a five-card hand. Four cards on their own are not a legal play in the standard game, and neither is any other number.
Going round from the opening lead, each player either passes or beats the play sitting on the table. A beat has to be the same size as the play it answers. Singles answer singles, pairs answer pairs, triples answer triples, five-card hands answer five-card hands. There is no way to change the size part way through a round, and no number of extra cards helps.
How plays of the same size are compared:
- Singles: rank first, and the suit ranking settles two cards of the same rank. The two of spades is the top card in the pack, so a single two of spades can never be beaten.
- Pairs: rank first; when two pairs share a rank, the one containing the higher suit takes it.
- Triples: rank alone, since no two triples can share a rank.
- Five-card hands: the shape of the hand decides first. From weakest to strongest they go straight, flush, full house, four of a kind with any odd fifth card, straight flush. Only when two hands are the same shape do you look inside them, and then a full house goes by its triple, a four of a kind by its quartet, a straight or straight flush by its highest card and, if that card is the same rank in both, by its suit, and a flush by its suit before anything else, with the highest card separating two flushes of the same suit.
Sequences are the one place where the two stops being the best card in the pack. In the basic game it ranks below the three for this purpose alone, so the highest straight is 10-J-Q-K-A and the lowest is A-2-3-4-5, with 2-3-4-5-6 just above that and 3-4-5-6-7 above that again. An ace may sit at either end of a sequence but never in the middle, which rules out K-A-2-3-4 and J-Q-K-A-2. Where exactly the two and the ace belong is the most argued-over rule in Big Two, and it changes from country to country and from table to table, so settle it out loud before the first deal; the reported orders are set out in the variants.
What a pass costs you is the other rule to settle before the first lead, because two answers are in circulation and they produce quite different hands. Ordinarily a pass gives up only that one turn. You are never obliged to beat a play just because you can, and if somebody else beats it you may come back in when the turn next reaches you. Indonesian play uses the strict rule instead: a pass puts you out of the round altogether, even if the play comes back to something you could have beaten with ease. That makes a pass a genuine decision rather than a way of waiting to see what happens, and it lets a player whose lead nobody beat go on to beat their own cards, with everyone else already shut out of the round.
Either way, the round ends as soon as nobody will beat the cards on the table: under the looser rule when the turn has gone right round without a beat, under the strict one when everyone still in has passed. How many cards each player is holding stays public throughout: ask, and you must be answered truthfully. The player whose cards are on top then sweeps the pile face down out of the way and leads again with anything at all: any size, any shape, with no relation whatever to the play that just won.
The hand ends the instant somebody lays down their last card. Nobody plays on to sort out the remaining places. Your final play may be one that nobody at the table could have beaten, and there is no obligation to leave yourself a card that others still have a chance against.
Goal & scoring
The hand belongs to the first player to get rid of every card they hold, and it stops there. Everyone else is charged for whatever they are still holding, and the charge climbs steeply against a player who barely got started, which is what stops people sitting on their twos all evening waiting for a clean run.
The simplest bookkeeping is a straight payment: each loser gives their penalty to the winner. Groups playing for money more often settle every pair of players separately, each paying everyone with a smaller penalty the difference between the two totals, which lets a close second finish the hand ahead of the field without having won it.
The usual schedule is one unit for every card still in hand, doubled for a player caught with ten to twelve of them and tripled for one still holding all thirteen. Where those multipliers kick in is regional and worth agreeing on beforehand. Plenty of tables set the bar lower, so that being caught with eight or nine cards already doubles the charge and holding all thirteen quadruples it.
There is no target score in the traditional game. Play an agreed number of deals, or simply until people have had enough, and add up: the lowest running total wins the session. If two players finish level and it matters to anyone, deal one more hand and let that settle it.
| Scores | Value | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Each card left, holding 9 or fewer | 1 | — |
| Each card left, holding 10 to 12 | 2 | — |
| Each card left, holding all 13 | 3 | The player never managed a single play all hand. |
Variants
Honour hands as bombs — An honour hand — four of a kind with its odd fifth card, or a straight flush — may be dropped on a single, a pair or a triple, ignoring the usual size-matching rule, and takes the round outright. It gives a player who has been frozen out by high singles a way back into the hand, and it makes splitting a natural four of a kind into a full house a much harder decision than it looks. A separate and smaller variation simply lets four cards of a rank be played without any fifth card, as a size of their own that only a higher four can beat.
Where the sequences stop — The top and bottom of the sequence order is the game's least settled rule, and the reports do not agree even within one country. One account of Hong Kong play puts A-2-3-4-5 highest, then 2-3-4-5-6, then 10-J-Q-K-A and on down to 3-4-5-6-7, with J-Q-K-A-2 no sequence at all; another calls the commonest Hong Kong version the one where the two simply ranks high and is never consecutive with a three, making J-Q-K-A-2 the highest and 3-4-5-6-7 the lowest. Elsewhere some tables crown 2-3-4-5-6 with A-2-3-4-5 second, some crown A-2-3-4-5, some refuse A-2-3-4-5 as a sequence at all, and some rank J-Q-K-A-2 over 2-3-4-5-6 over 10-J-Q-K-A, reasoning from a comparison that works down the cards in order of ordinary rank. Indonesian play puts any sequence containing a two above every sequence that does not, and separates two of them by the suit of the two. Any of these is playable; what is not playable is two people at the same table using different ones.
Steeper penalties — A harsher charge for the cards left in hand, common wherever the game is played for real stakes: double for a player left with eight or nine cards, triple for ten to twelve, and quadruple for anyone still holding the full thirteen. It raises the pressure to unload low cards early and makes a hand of scattered singletons genuinely frightening rather than merely bad.
Dragon wins — A player dealt a dragon at some Hong Kong tables — one card of every rank, the three right up through the ace and the two as well, which accounts for all thirteen cards — wins the deal on the spot. Each of the other three is then charged the full thirty-nine points, exactly as though they had sat the hand out without playing a card.
Short-handed play — Three players are normally dealt seventeen cards each, with the fifty-second card turned in the middle and added to the hand of whoever holds the three of diamonds — or to the holder of the three of clubs, if the turned card is itself the three of diamonds. Nothing is missing from the count that way. A smaller variation deals thirteen each and leaves the rest as a stock: a pass costs you a card drawn from it, and some groups charge as many cards as the play you declined to make. Two-handed practice varies between seventeen, twenty-one and thirteen cards each with the remainder always set aside unseen, which makes the two-handed game the one where a large block of the pack really is unaccounted for.
Rules checked against Pagat, Wikipedia, Cool Old Games, Gambiter, Denexa Games, Official Game Rules, Cats at Cards, Group Games 101, HobbyLark.