Proposal for a Shorthand Scheme for
Hakka Luk Fu Pai

This page was created Saturday 19th September 1998, but the original idea was from Monday 31st August 1998.

© Dylan W.H.S.

Currently there is no convenient way of recording the moves in a game of Luk Fu. The author proposes the following shorthand for this purpose.

Directions

Let the cardinal points of a compass be the four directions with South (S) as the dealer of the current game, East (E) as the next active player on his right, North (N) holds one card if there are four players (so the Leeten (L) card is included in the deck making 37 playing cards), and West (W) is the final active player to the dealer's left. Below is a schematic view of the table.


           N

         _____

        |     |

     W  |     |  E

        |_____|



           S

       The Dealer

Note that all these are in capital letters.

Suits in order of decreasing rank

There are four suits in the Hakka Luk Fu pack

Suite Representation Comments

Sip s Note this is in lower case to distinguish it from South (S)

Gon g Like the first letter of the gon suite

Sop z use z instead to avoid confusion with sip.

Ten t Like first letter in ten suite.

Suite	Representation	Comments
Sip	s	Note this is in lower case to distinguish it from South (S)
Gon	g	Like the first letter of the gon suite
Sop	z	use z instead to avoid confusion with sip.
Ten	t	Like first letter in ten suite.

Note that all these are in lowercase letters.

We also introduce a special shorthand for the Leefa card which is used only when there are 4 players.

Card Representation Comments

Leeten L Like first letter Leeten.

Card	Representation	Comments
Leeten	L	Like first letter Leeten.

Leeten can only be used singularly, or when there is Ung Fu Ha San. It cannot join with other value-one cards to make three or four card combinations.

Numbers

There are nine cards in each suite, and they can be ordered in the ascending cardinal numerals:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Naming the Cards in the pack

Case 1: Single cards:

Case 2: Card flush of the same suit:

Note that these must always follow in numerical order before the suite shorthand.

Case 3: Card flush with same numerical value, but of different suits

Note all these have the numerical value written once, and the order of the cards according to the highest to the lowest ranking suite shorthands.

Play

During Play :

⁴

End of the current game and the matching of the North card :

Micellaneous :

Example

For instance, a scenario would be:


S o

E o

W p



West plays after the others decide not to.



S 4s

E 7s!

W 8s!



South opens with 4 sip, which is beaten by east and the west.

West now opens the next round with a sixes combination



W 6gzt

S xxx

E 8gzt!



South discards three cards, and East beats the offer by W. It is now

East's turn to play. He puts down a 9 Sip which cannot be beaten and

the others have to discard a card each.



E 9s

S x

W x



Since no one beat his card, East still leads. East has no Sip cards 

remaining and resorts to the next highest rank suit, gon.



E 3g

W 7g!

S 9g!



East's 3 gon card is easily beaten by West and South.... etc...

Miscellaneous

Moving the cursor over each card representation in the below table will show the card's name and abbreviation defined in this page. (Only in IE)

Suits in decreasing rank	Cards in decreasing numerical value	Leeten
SIP (s)
GON (g)
SOP (z)
TEN (t)

Hakka Playing Cards : How To Play : Scoring System
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This page was last updated on Friday 25th September 1998,
This page was created on Monday 22nd April 2002
© Dylan W.H.S. 1996-1998
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Proposal for a Shorthand Scheme for Hakka Luk Fu Pai