Shikagari (鹿狩り)

Players

4 players in 2 teams. Player 0 & Player 2 form Team A, Player 1 & Player 3 form Team B. Partners sit across from each other.

Equipment

A set of 32 Chinese dominoes (天九牌 / Tian Jiu Pai).

Objective

Capture tiles with red pips (紅点). The 1-pips and 4-pips on Chinese dominoes are traditionally colored red. The team that captures more red pips wins. There are 64 red pips total across all 32 tiles.

Dealing

Each player receives 8 tiles. The dealing uses a special algorithm to ensure fair distribution:

• 8 "high tiles" (天[6-6]×2, 斧頭[6-5]×2, 紅頭十[6-4]×2, 人[4-4]×2) are separated
• The remaining 24 tiles are shuffled and split into 2 groups of 12
• Each high-tile pair is split: one copy goes to each group
• Each group (now 16 tiles) is assigned to a team, then split 8-8 between teammates

Gameplay

The game consists of 8 tricks. Play proceeds counter-clockwise (0→3→2→1).

Playing a Trick

1. The leader plays any single tile from their hand
2. Each subsequent player plays any single tile (there is no requirement to follow suit or rank)
3. After all 4 players have played, the highest-ranked tile wins the trick
4. The winning team collects all red pips from the 4 tiles played
5. The trick winner becomes the leader of the next trick

Tile Ranking

Tiles are ranked by their pip values: higher maximum pip wins, with ties broken by the lower pip. The ranking from highest to lowest:

[6-6] > [6-5] > [6-4] > [6-3] > [6-2] > [6-1] > [5-5] > [5-4] > [5-3] > [5-2] > [5-1] > [4-4] > [4-3] > [4-2] > [4-1] > [3-3] > [3-2] > [3-1] > [2-2] > [2-1] > [1-1]

If two tiles have the same pips (e.g., both copies of [6-6]), the one played first wins.

Red Pips

The red pip counts per tile:

• 天 [6-6]: 6 red pips (special traditional coloring)
• 人 [4-4]: 8 red pips
• 雑五 [4-1]: 5 red pips
• 紅頭十 [6-4], 雑九 [5-4], 雑七 [4-3], 大鶏六 [4-2]: 4 red pips each
• 地 [1-1]: 2 red pips
• 和 [3-1], 高脚七 [6-1], 銅錘六 [5-1], 細鶏三 [2-1]: 1 red pip each
• All others: 0 red pips

Winning

Play 4 games (short) or 8 games. Each game consists of 8 tricks. After each game, red pips earned are added to the team's cumulative total.

The team with the higher total red pips after all games wins.

In the rare case of a tie, the team that captured the [6-3] tile (雑九) in the final game wins.