Tongits — Play

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The idea

Three players race to shed their cards. You’re dealt a hand from a standard 52-card deck and try to arrange it into melds — sets (three or four of a kind) and runs (three or more in sequence, same suit). Lower your hand, and go out before the others.

How to play

Draw the top of the stockpile, or take the last discard if it completes a meld.
Lay melds face-up on the table, and sapaw — lay off extra cards onto any exposed meld, yours or an opponent’s.
Discard one card to end your turn.
Win three ways: Tongits — empty your hand; Draw — when the stock runs out, the lowest hand wins; or Call a fight and show the lowest hand.
Card values for the count: Ace = 1, pips at face value, J/Q/K = 10.

Playing it

Your hand sits along the bottom. On your turn, use the buttons to draw, tap a suggested Lay to expose a meld, pick a card then hit the Sapaw button (the matching table meld lights up green) to lay it off, or select a card and Discard. Two AI opponents play against you, from gentle to genuinely tough:

LearnerCasualExpertPro

Scoring & betting

Every round is played for chips. Pick a stake before you sit down — the four tiers set the bet per round (from $0.25 up to $10), and you start with a buy-in of 20× that bet in chips. Each round the losers pay the winner, and the chips always net to zero across the table:

Tongits (empty hand) or a successful Call — each opponent pays the winner 2× the bet.
Draw — when the stock runs out, the lowest hand wins and each opponent pays 1× the bet.
Failed Call — Call but aren’t uniquely the lowest, and you pay the real winner a 2× penalty instead.
Kulang — a loser who never laid a single meld pays an extra bet on top.

“Lowest hand” uses the same count as above (Ace = 1, pips face value, J/Q/K = 10). Run out of chips and you’re back to the main menu to re-buy at a new stake.

About

Tongits is a hugely popular Filipino card game. This is a free, original implementation of its core mechanics — melds, sapaw, and the three ways to win.