OFC Pineapple Rules

Overview

OFC Pineapple (Open Face Chinese Poker, OFC for short) is an arrangement game that grew out of Chinese Poker, and is also known as "open-face Chinese poker". As in Chinese Poker, you arrange 13 cards into three rows: Top, Middle and Bottom. The difference is that in Chinese Poker you receive all your cards before arranging them, while in OFC cards are dealt and placed a few at a time, face up, and cannot be moved once placed. You have to commit before you know what cards are still coming, and placing too greedily can lead to a "Foul".

These rules are the most widely used Pineapple variant, with Ultimate Fantasyland house rules.

Hand: From the first round of cards until all three players have filled their 13 spots and the showdown is scored. The three players' scores always add up to 0.

Cards and Dealing

• One 52-card deck is used. 3 players × 17 cards = 51 cards, nearly the whole deck, so this variant allows at most 3 players.
• The deck is reshuffled every hand.
• Rank order: A is highest, 2 is lowest. Suits have no rank; hands of the same type and ranks are a tie.
• Each player has three rows:

How a regular hand is dealt:

How to Play

1. Order of play: Each round starts with the player after the dealer and proceeds clockwise, with the dealer acting last. After a regular hand, the dealer button moves one seat clockwise.
2. Round 1: You receive 5 cards and place all of them into your three rows, split however you like (for example, 3 in the Bottom and 2 in the Middle).
3. Rounds 2–5: Each round you receive 3 cards, place 2 of them, and discard the remaining 1 face down.
4. Once placed, cards stay put: A card cannot be moved or switched to another row after it is placed. Once a row is full (3 cards in the Top, 5 each in the Middle and Bottom), no more cards can go there.
5. Open face: Everyone's placed cards are public, so you can look at your opponents' boards when deciding how to place your own. Only two kinds of cards are hidden: cards not yet dealt, and each player's face-down discards. You know what you discarded; your opponents don't.
6. Showdown: When all three players have placed 13 cards, the hands are revealed. First the game checks whether anyone fouled, then compares each pair of players row by row and calculates royalties.
7. Discards revealed: After the showdown is scored, all three players' face-down discards are revealed in the order they were discarded, for you to review. They are never visible during play.
8. When someone qualifies for Fantasyland, the next hand is played in the special way described under "Fantasyland".

Hand Rankings

Hand types are the same as in standard poker, from highest to lowest:

Notes:

• Straights: 10-J-Q-K-A is the highest; A-2-3-4-5 is the lowest straight (its highest card counts as 5). There are no wraparound straights such as J-Q-K-A-2.
• A royal flush is simply the highest straight flush. It has no separate rank when comparing hands; it is only listed separately in the royalty table.
• The Top row has only 3 cards, so it can only be a high card, one pair or three of a kind; three consecutive cards or three cards of one suit do not count as a straight or flush in the Top row.
• If everything is still equal after all comparisons, it is a tie and neither player scores that row.

Legal Arrangements and Fouls

The strength of your three rows must satisfy:

Bottom ≥ Middle ≥ Top

Breaking this is a Foul. Because cards are placed as they are dealt and cannot be moved, fouling is a real risk in this game. For example, you place a pair of Kings in the Top early on, and later the Middle never gets anything better than a pair of Kings.

Consequences of fouling:

• The fouling player loses 6 points to each opponent who did not foul (1 point for each of the three rows + 3 points for being scooped).
• The fouling player's royalties are all reset to zero, and they still have to pay their opponents' royalties.
• A fouling player cannot enter or stay in Fantasyland.
• Two players both foul: They score 0 against each other, and neither player's royalties count. At a three-player table, if two players foul, they score 0 against each other, but each still pays the player who did not foul.
• All three foul: everyone scores 0.

Three rows of exactly equal strength are not a foul (the rule is "greater than or equal to").

How the Top (3 cards) and Middle (5 cards) are compared: compare hand type first; if the type is the same, compare the main rank, then the kickers in order. Since the Top has only 3 cards, once the comparison reaches kickers the Top doesn't have, the Middle counts as higher.

(The third row only illustrates the comparison rule: a single deck can never contain six 9s.)

Scoring

Each hand, you settle head-to-head with each of your two opponents separately, then add the two results together. A three-player table has three pairings, and the three players' totals add up to 0.

1-6 Scoring

• The extra 3 points are only for winning all three rows; a single tied or lost row means no bonus.
• When an opponent fouls, it counts as you winning all three rows: +6, plus your royalties.

Your score against one opponent = (rows won − rows lost) + scoop bonus + (your royalties − opponent's royalties)

Royalty Table

Royalties are extra rewards for making strong hands. You collect them as long as you don't foul, whether or not you won that row. The same hand is worth more royalties the higher the row it is in. At settlement, both players' royalties offset each other: however many more royalty points you have than your opponent, that is how many extra points you collect from them.

Top (3 cards)

Middle and Bottom (5 cards)

Scoring Example

Players A, B and C reach the showdown:

• A: No foul, flush in the Bottom (royalty 4), no royalties in the other two rows → total royalties 4.
• B: No foul, pair of Kings in the Top (royalty 8), no royalties in the other two rows → total royalties 8.
• C: Fouled → royalties reset to zero.
• A vs B: A wins the Middle and Bottom and loses the Top.

Scores for this hand: A −3 + 10 = +7; B +3 + 14 = +17; C −10 − 14 = −24. Total: 0.

Also, because B had a pair of Kings in the Top without fouling, B enters Fantasyland next hand and receives 15 cards.

Fantasyland

Fantasyland is the biggest reward in OFC Pineapple: a qualifying player receives all of their cards at once for the next hand, sees them all, and then arranges them in one go, with no guessing as the cards come.

How to Enter

In a regular hand, if you place a pair of Queens or better in the Top (a pair of Queens, Kings, Aces, or any three of a kind) without fouling, you enter Fantasyland next hand. No entry fee is required.

How a Fantasyland Hand Works

• The Fantasyland player receives 14–17 cards at once (see the table below), chooses 13 of them to fill all three rows, and discards the rest face down.
• The Fantasyland player sets first, face down: they place all their cards before anyone else acts, and the cards are only revealed at the showdown.
• The other players, who are not in Fantasyland, play as usual, receiving and placing cards a few at a time, and cannot see the Fantasyland player's cards.
• More than one player can be in Fantasyland at the same time.
• A Fantasyland hand must still follow "Bottom ≥ Middle ≥ Top", fouls are penalized as usual, and scoring and royalties are exactly the same.
• As long as anyone is in Fantasyland that hand, the dealer button does not move; it resumes rotating only after a hand in which no one is in Fantasyland.

How Many Cards (Ultimate)

"Ultimate" means: when you stay in Fantasyland, you keep the same number of cards you entered with; it does not drop back to 14.

How to Stay

In a Fantasyland hand, if you don't foul and achieve any one of the following, you stay in Fantasyland for the next hand:

• Note: some rule sets let a "full house in the Middle" keep you in Fantasyland; these rules do not.
• A player already in Fantasyland is judged only by the stay conditions above; placing a pair of Queens, Kings or Aces in the Top during a Fantasyland hand does not keep you there.
• If you don't meet a stay condition, you return to regular play next hand.

Special Rules and Rulings

The following are rulings on points that common rule books leave unclear:

1. Comparing the Top and Middle includes kickers, and kickers missing from the Top count as lowest. "Top K-K-A, Middle K-K-Q-J-9" is a foul; "Top K-K-9, Middle K-K-A-Q-J" is legal.

2. The card count does not upgrade within Fantasyland. If you make three of a kind in the Top during a 14-, 15- or 16-card Fantasyland hand, your card count stays the same next hand (14 cards stays 14, not 17). Staying via four of a kind or better in the Bottom also keeps the original count.

   Before 2026-09-20, this said: "The count can upgrade within Fantasyland, taking the larger of your current count and the entry count for this hand's Top row." That ruling was reversed on 2026-09-22. The old wording was inferred from one sentence in a public rule book, but the phrase "resulting from" in that sentence only covers entering Fantasyland via three of a kind; it does not imply an upgrade along the way. The platforms where the game is actually played do not upgrade. The old ruling is kept here struck through because hands played before then were dealt under the old rule.

3. Three rows of exactly equal strength are not a foul.

4. When two players both foul, they score 0 against each other and neither player's royalties count; but each still pays the third player who did not foul (6 points + that player's royalties).

5. Staying in Fantasyland depends only on hand type and row, not on the royalty amount. A full house in the Middle is worth 12 royalty points but still does not keep you in Fantasyland.

6. All discards are revealed after the showdown. This is only for your review; no decisions remain after the showdown, and the whole deck is reshuffled for the next hand, so fairness is unaffected.

7. Fantasyland has no entry fee.

8. Variants not used in this game (52 cards): classic OFC dealing one card per round, Progressive (staying always drops back to 14 cards), the 2-7 variant where the Middle is played low, and two-player tables. The two-Joker variant is a separate game, Joker OFC Pineapple.

House rules on this page: Pineapple OFC, 3-player table, 1-6 scoring, standard royalty table, Ultimate Fantasyland (entry with 14 / 15 / 16 / 17 cards; stay conditions are three of a kind in the Top or four of a kind or better in the Bottom).