Thirteen Rules
Thirteen is a shedding card game that's sometimes called the national card game of Vietnam! There it's known as Tiến lên, in English it's known as Thirteen. It's a fairly simple game, but does require some strategy to play it well.
There are commonly two variations of Tiến lên played in Vietnam - the Northern and Southern version. The version on this site is the Southern version, which is less strict and doesn't require as much strategy as the Northern version.
Objective
The objective of the game is to be the first player to get rid of all your cards.
Deck, card and suit rank
The game is played with a standard 52 card deck. The rank of cards from low to high is:
3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Jack Queen King Ace 2
The unusual thing here is that the 2 is the highest card. It's also a special card in that it cannot be used in any sequences.
The suits also have a rank. The suits from low to high are:
Spades♠, Clubs♣, Diamonds♦, Hearts♥
The suit rank is less important than the normal card rank though, and only comes into effect if you have two cards with the same rank. E.g. a 5 of spades is always higher than a 4 of hearts, even though spades is the lowest suit and hearts is the highest suit, because 5 is higher than 4 and that's more important. But if you have a 5 of spades and a 5 of hearts then the 5 of hearts would be considered higher because the rank is the same but hearts is higher than spades.
Gameplay
In real life there can be 2 or more players in the game, here on CardGames.io we always have 4 players. Each player gets dealt 13 cards. The player with the 3 of spades starts the first round of the game. He has to play that card first, but it can be part of a combination. In later rounds the winner of the last round starts and doesn't have to start with the 3 of spades.
When the table is empty and a player is playing he can play a few different types of combinations. Those are:
- Single card. Just a single card of any rank.
- Pair of cards with the same rank, e.g. two 3's.
- Three cards of the same rank.
- Four cards of the same rank.
- Sequence of at least 3 cards, e.g. 4,5,6. The card in a sequence don't have to have the same suit. A 2 can never be part of a sequence.
- Double sequence of at least 6 cards. A double sequence has two cards of each rank, e.g. 3,3,4,4,5,5. These are hard to get and don't often occur.
Once a player has put out a combination the other players have to try to play the same type of combination with a higher rank. E.g. if the first player puts out a single card, a 5 lets say, then the other players can only put out single cards on top of it. If the first player puts out a pair of cards the others must also put out a pair, with a higher rank. If a player can't play a higher ranking combination of the same type he must say Pass. If no player can put out a higher combination than what's on the table, they all say Pass and the cards are removed from the table. The player who had the final combination on the table gets to play next and can play any combination he wants, since the table is now empty.
A player is allowed to Pass even if he has cards that he could play. However, if he does that he will have to keep passing until the current cards have been cleared from the table.
Understanding the ranking and how it works is very important. We talked about the suit rank before, e.g. a H5 is higher than a C5, and so you can play the H5 on top of the C5.
For pairs you can play the same numerical rank if the highest card of the pair is higher than the highest card of the pair on the table. So you can can play C5 H5 on top of D5 S5 because H5 is higher than D5. Or you can play any pair of 6's or higher on top of any pair of 5's because numerical rank matters more than suit rank.
For sequences you can play another sequence if the highest card of your sequence is higher than the highest card of the sequence on the table. Again, it's all about the highest card of the combination. So you can play C5 H6 D7 on top of D5 D6 C7 because D7 is higher than C7. Or you can play any three card sequence that starts on a higher numerical rank, e.g. starts from 6.
It sounds more complicated than it is. Basically you always have to play the same type of combination as the one that's on the table and the highest card in your combination has to be higher than the highest card in the combination on the table.
Bombs
2 is the highest card in the deck. However, there are a couple of combinations known as bombs that can be played on top of 2's as follows:
- A 4-of-a-kind or a double sequence of 3 or more can be played on top of a single 2.
- A double sequence of 4 or more can be played on top of two 2's.
- A double sequence of 5 or more can be played on top of three 2s.
- A higher bomb of the same type of combination can be played on top of a previously played bomb.
Winning
The player that finishes all his cards first wins the round and gets 3 points. The other players keeps playing. The second player to finish gets 2 points, the third gets 1 point and the fourth gets 0 points. The first player to get 10 points or more wins the game. If two players get to 10 in the same round and have the same score, then the game continues until there's only one winner. That's not in the original rules, but we prefer it here at CardGames.io, it's nicer to have one final winner rather than many!
Some versions of the game allow "Instant Win" if you get dealt four 2's, or a sequence from 3 to ace. We don't use that rule here on CardGames.io.
You can also view an excellent video that explains the game at gathertogethergames.com, which is a very good page with rules for card games.
Selecting cards and playing them
Just a quick note about how selecting and playing cards works. When you click on a card you select it, it moves up slightly. Once you've selected cards that form a legal move they will be played automatically. E.g. there are two 5's on the table. As soon as you've clicked on two 6's in your hand they will be played. If you have selected one 6 and want to deselect it and select 7's instead, just click again on the selected 6 and it will be deselected and you're free to select 7s.
There's a 'Play' button next to your player, but you really only have to use it when you're playing onto an empty table and are playing fewer cards than you can. E.g. you have three 6's, but you only want to play two of them because you want to use the third one for a sequence. Then once you've selected 2 sixes you can press the Play button to play just those two sixes. If you on the other hand selected all three 6's then we will play them for you because we know that you can't add any more cards to that play.
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About Thirteen
The idea for this game came up while Cardgames.io was advertising its app, when someone said that if a version of Tien Len were made, all of Vietnam would start playing on the site or in the app. After looking at the rules, it became clear that the game was almost exactly the same as a game already known under the Icelandic name “Rassgat” (the exact meaning won’t be explained, but it refers to a part of the human anatomy…) It was a game that had already been considered for the site and one that was particularly well liked. There didn’t seem to be any good web versions of the game available, even though there are plenty of apps for it, so the decision was made to make a decent web version and hopefully get some people to play it. The English name for ti is Thirteen, and since this is an English-language site, Thirteen is used as the main title but it really is Tien Len.
So now it’s been made, and the wait is on for all of Vietnam to show up!
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