Thirteen
Tiến lên is Vietnam’s national card game and one of the most-played games in the world. It is a climbing game: you do not match the previous play, you beat it, and knowing when to refuse is most of the skill.
Select a card or a combination and play it — it must beat the last one. Pass if you would rather keep your cards.
| Players | 2 to 4 |
|---|---|
| Deck | One standard 52-card deck, thirteen cards each |
| Play time | 8–15 minutes |
| Difficulty | Simple to start, sharp in the endgame |
How to play Thirteen
The whole deck is dealt out, thirteen cards each with four players. The name comes from the hand size, though the Vietnamese name, Tiến lên, means roughly "go forward".
The ranking
Learn this first, because it is not the one you know. Cards run from 3 as the lowest up through the numbers, then jack, queen, king, ace, and finally 2 as the highest single card. Suits break ties, ranked spades lowest, then clubs, diamonds, hearts highest.
Combinations
A play is one of four shapes, and you must always answer with the same shape:
- Single — one card.
- Pair — two of the same rank.
- Triple — three of the same rank.
- Run — three or more consecutive ranks. Twos may not be used in runs.
To beat a play you need the same shape at a higher value — a higher single, a higher pair, a longer-or-higher run of the same length. If you cannot or will not, you pass. Once everybody has passed, the last player to have played starts a fresh round with anything they like.
Bombs
Twos are the strongest single cards, so the game provides an answer. Bombs — four of a kind, or three consecutive pairs — can beat a two outright, and a bigger bomb beats a smaller one. This is what stops a player holding two or three twos from simply winning.
Winning
The first player to shed every card wins. The others finish in order of how many cards they are left holding.
Strategy
Thirteen looks like a game about having good cards and is really a game about the order you spend them in.
Lead low, and lead often
Whoever wins a round leads the next one, and leading is where the control is. Leading your lowest single forces opponents to spend real cards on a trivial trick, and if they all pass you get to lead again immediately. Players who open with their aces win one round and then hand the lead away for the rest of the hand.
Break your hand into shapes before you play a card
Thirteen cards will divide into some combination of singles, pairs, triples and runs, and how you divide them is a decision. A hand with 4-5-6-7 can be a four-card run or two pairs' worth of material for other combinations. Deciding early avoids the classic ending where you hold two unrelated cards and can only shed one per round.
Count the twos and the bombs
There are four twos. If three have been played, the fourth is the highest card in the game and whoever holds it controls every single-card round. Likewise, once you know a bomb has gone, your own two becomes far safer to lead with.
Passing is a move, not a failure
You may pass even when you could legally play, and often should. Spending a king to win a round you did not need hands the initiative to nobody and leaves you weaker for the round that matters. Watch how many players have already passed — if you are last to act and everyone else has folded, a small card takes it.
Keep a guaranteed final play
The most common losing position is holding a single low card while somebody else leads round after round. Plan the last two plays of your hand backwards: end on a two, a bomb, or a shape nobody can answer, and make sure your penultimate play does not strand a card you can never get rid of.
Variants
- Tiến lên miền Nam — the Southern Vietnamese standard, with instant-win hands and chained bomb rules.
- Instant wins — many tables award an immediate victory for dealt hands like four twos, six pairs, or a full dragon run from 3 to ace.
- Chop rules — variants on exactly which bombs beat which, and whether four-of-a-kind can be beaten only by a larger four-of-a-kind.
- Tiến lên đếm lá — scoring by counting the cards left in losers’ hands rather than simply placing players.
- Big Two — the closely related Chinese game, played with poker hands as the combinations and a different suit order.
Where Thirteen came from
Tiến lên is Vietnamese and is often described as the country's national card game; it is played across Vietnam and throughout the Vietnamese diaspora, and it reached the United States and Australia in large numbers after 1975. It belongs to the family of climbing games — sometimes called shedding-and-climbing — whose defining feature is that each play must beat the last rather than merely follow it.
The family's centre of gravity is East and Southeast Asia. Its close relatives are the Chinese Big Two (also called Deuces or Choh Dai Di), which uses poker combinations, and the older Chinese game Zheng Shangyou, which is usually cited as the ancestor of the whole group. John McLeod's card game archive documents the relationships and the very wide regional variation in bomb rules and instant-win hands. The Western game President — also called Scum or Landlord — is a simplified member of the same family, which is why Thirteen feels immediately familiar to people who have never heard of it.
Questions people ask about Thirteen
- Which card is highest in Thirteen?
- The 2. The order runs 3 as lowest, up through the numbers to jack, queen, king, ace, and then 2 at the top. When two cards share a rank, suits decide: spades lowest, then clubs, diamonds, and hearts highest.
- What is a bomb?
- A special combination that can beat a 2 — either four of a kind or three consecutive pairs. Bombs exist specifically to stop players who hold several twos from controlling the whole hand, and a larger bomb beats a smaller one.
- Do I have to play if I can?
- No. Passing is always allowed and is frequently correct. Spending a high card to win a round that does not matter leaves you weaker for the round that does.
- Can I use a 2 in a run?
- No. Twos are excluded from runs, which is part of what keeps them valuable as single cards rather than as sequence filler.
- What happens when everyone passes?
- The last player to have played a card wins the round and leads the next one with any combination they choose. Winning a round is therefore how you gain control of the hand.
- Is Thirteen the same as Big Two?
- They are close relatives in the same climbing family, but not identical. Big Two is Chinese, uses poker hands as its combinations, and orders the suits differently. If you know one, you can learn the other in a few minutes.