How to play
Fan Tan was once the great gambling game of southern China, and it travelled with Chinese emigrants to the gold fields and Chinatowns of the nineteenth century. The whole game is one question: if you take a pile of beads and remove them four at a time, how many are left at the end? The answer is always 1, 2, 3 or 4, because an exact multiple of four leaves a final group of four standing.
On this table a cup of beads waits under a brass bowl. You place bets, the bowl comes up, and the beads are swept away in fours until only the answer is left.
- Pick a chip: 20, 100, 200 or 1,000.
- Tap squares on the board. Each tap adds one chip to that bet. A single bet can hold up to 1,000 credits, and the whole board up to 3,000.
- Press Reveal. The bowl lifts, the counting runs, and the message reads something like “87 beads: 3 left over”.
- Winning squares are paid; the rest are cleared. Rebet puts your last layout back, and Clear empties the board before a reveal.
The “Recent results” strip at the top keeps up to the last 20 remainders, newest first.
The board
The board is a square. The four Fan numbers run along its sides, the four Kwok bets fill the corners, and Odd and Even share the middle:
| Bet | You win when the remainder is | Pays (before commission) |
|---|---|---|
| Fan 1, 2, 3 or 4 | That exact number | 3 to 1 |
| Kwok 1-2, 2-3, 3-4 or 4-1 | Either of two neighbors | 1 to 1 |
| Odd | 1 or 3 | 1 to 1 |
| Even | 2 or 4 | 1 to 1 |
Kwok means “corner” in Cantonese. Each corner touches the two number sides it covers, which is why 4-1 exists: the square wraps around.
The commission
Old Fan Tan houses didn’t shade their odds. They paid true odds and took a cut of every win, and this table does the same: 5% of the winnings goes to the house. A 20-credit Fan bet that wins comes back as 77 credits, your 20 plus 57 profit instead of 60. A 20-credit Kwok, Odd or Even win comes back as 39.
That’s why the smallest chip is 20. Every stake is a multiple of 20, so the commission always lands on a whole credit.
The odds
The bead count is drawn evenly from 40 to 119. That’s 80 possible counts, exactly 20 of which leave each remainder, so 1, 2, 3 and 4 each come up one time in four.
| Bet | Wins | House edge |
|---|---|---|
| Fan | 1 in 4 | 3.75% |
| Kwok | 2 in 4 | 2.5% |
| Odd / Even | 2 in 4 | 2.5% |
Strip the commission away and every bet would be dead fair. The 5% cut is the entire edge, which is why the bet that pays the most (Fan) also costs the most.
Strategy
The useful decisions are about how to cover numbers, since some combinations cost more than others for the same result.
- Two numbers? Use one even-money bet, not two Fan bets. Fan on 1 and Fan on 3 at 20 each puts 40 on the table and returns 77 half the time, an average loss of 1.5 credits. A single 40-credit bet on Odd covers the same two numbers, returns 78, and loses only 1 on average.
- Neighbors work the same way. Kwok 2-3 is the cheap way to back 2 and 3 together.
- Don’t cover everything. Fan on all four numbers returns 77 for every 80 staked, a guaranteed 3-credit loss each reveal. Odd plus Even costs 1 per 40.
- Results don’t streak. Each reveal draws a fresh count of beads. Three 4s in a row on the history strip tell you nothing about the next one.
Fan Tan rewards patience rather than cleverness: pick the bet type with the edge you’re comfortable with and enjoy the counting. For other old games of pure chance, Chō-han asks whether two dice add up to odd or even, and Two-Up is settled by a pair of tossed coins.
