Translated from English and adapted from an article published on the Chinese-game.com site, by Benjamin Weil, 2019
The Khanu or Khanhoo is a Chinese card game adapted to the Western taste by the British diplomat William Henry Wilkinson and published by the London cartographer Charles Goodall in 1891.
The Chinese game at the origin of its modern version seems to have been spread in China in the second half of the 19th century. It was then played with four games of 30 cards with monetary value, also called "Gun Pai" or "Stick Cards".
Like many Chinese card games, the Kanhu belongs to the same family as the Mah-Jong and the Mexican game in the middle of the 19th century, Cunquian, Conquian, Cooncan or Kon Khin, the oldest rami game known in the world Western - played at least since the 1880s and first named "Coon Can" in 1887 and "Conquián" in 1897.
The pieces of the game are as follows: first, the "tsín", are the Chinese coins of the lower name, commonly called "ping" or "cakes", they go from one to nine; Second, series of a hundred of each of these same Chinese pieces, called "Sok", "thongs", one to nine; and third, from "mám" or "ten thousand strings" of a thousand pieces, "kún", from one to new, and called "mám", ten thousand. The three additional cards, which more or less correspond to the Joker, are called "Hung Fá", "Red Flower", '' Pák Fá '', "White Flower", and 'ló tsín' ', and "Old Thousand ".
As it is a game of cards from the Rami family, the goal of the game is to delete all the cards by merging them into families. The first player to do so obtains 5 points and the first to reach 50 points wins the match, which can be obtained in two, three or four laps.
The invention du Kanhu West
The Kanhu was introduced for the first time in England before 1895 by Sir William Henry Wilkinson, a British sinologist who was British consul in China and Korea and who wrote many articles and books on Chinese games, such as the manual Chinese failures, the Chinese origin of playing cards, Khanhoo game and the Bridge Maxims.
In 1891, Wilkinson brought the cardier Charles Goodall to make a special card game accompanied by a Kanhu rules booklet. The package contained two sets ranging from AS to 9 of heart, clubs and diamonds, two valets, and queens and kings specially designed to replace the additional cards.
Over the years, his passion for the game took such a magnitude that he was nicknamed William Khanhoo Wilkinson, for his collection of booklets published in Portugal and Brazil in 1997 by the Altaya editions in Barcelona, in cooperation with Naipes Heraclio Fournier, from Spain.
The Kanhu known to Chinese workers is played by two or more people with a complete package of one hundred and twenty cards. In this game, the following series are called "ngán", "eyes":
* 1, 2 and 3 "cakes"
* Red flower, old thousand and nine strings
* White flower, 9 of ten thousand and 8 strings
* 1 of ten thousand, 1 strings and 9 "cakes"
* 2 of ten thousand, 2 strings and 8 of "cakes"
* 3 of strings, 2 of ten thousand and 8 "cakes"
* 3 of channels, 3 of ten thousand and 7 "cakes"
A winning hand must contain at least one of these "eyes" and the remaining cards must be arranged in one or more of the following combinations, called "Pát Tsz", "boys". It is a sequence of three or more cards of the same color ranging from one to nine cards, or three cards of the same name belonging to three different colors. The aces of each of the three series and the red flower, the white flower and the "old thousand" have extraordinary powers and can be added to the "eyes", to the sequences or to the tripled called "Pát Tsz" to form a winning hand.
The game's rules
Distribute 15 cards with one hand to each player and store the remaining cards faced on the table to form a reserve stack. In turn, the first player draws, merges if possible and throws one, visible face on the table, to form a pile of rejections. Then the following player shoots, merge if possible and throw one on the table.
If a losing card is suitable for one of the players, it must be immediately merged so that all the other players can see why this player needed this card. But if a player draws a card from the pickaxe, she does not have to be shown as long as he is unable to deposit all his cards at the same time.
In a party to three or four players, any rejected card can be requested by any of the players, having "preference" the one next to the player who defeated this card.
The game evolves in the direction of the needles of a watch.
It is important to remember the cards already played in order to know which combinations can no longer be formed.
Take into account that during the game, many top cards can be drawn from the draw by other players, which changes the course of your strategy.
You can play a variant of the game using three English games of 52 cards and a joker to form a new sequence of mergers.