A general rule of thumb: Single cards are bad, very very bad in Tichu. Before card-exchange phase, you analyse to decide which 3 cards to pass on and after card-exchange phase, you analyse to decide if you want to call Tichu or not. Your gameplay or your decision to hit or to pass, depends on the logic of numbers, for example, if opponent plays a 3 out and in your hand, you have a single 5,9,K,A and combos (double, triplet, step doubles, straight, etc) in hand, you should play out your 5 out.

In chess, chinese chess and go, you analyse positional situation while in Tichu, you analyse numerical situation. In Tichu, you may make a mistake but your partner may cover your mistake by exiting first or second, thus preventing opponents' 1-2 and vice versa. If your chess opponent exploit that blunder, you will be in trouble and no one is coming to bail you out (no dog card in chess ). Unlike chess, chinese chess and go, if you make a blunder ? move, you alone are responsible for that blunder move. These mistakes usually occur during the Tichu gameplay phase. As they said ' To err is human', people make mistakes, there is always a probability in that Tichu round: both you and your partner make mistakes or you make a mistake, your partner does not or you do not make a mistake but your partner does and the outcome of that round may come out differently. Since this is a team partnership 2 vs 2 cardgame, Tichu has a huge human factor in it.

So is Tichu a fun family cardgame? Let us examine the differences and similarity. Hopefully in the future, we shall see more literature written on Tichu cardgame. Nope, there is no 'Tichu for Dummies' book that can be found on the bookshelf.

While there are some Tichu strategy tips articles written by Aaron Fuegi and others, out there in internet, I do not see any books written on Tichu cardgame that can be found in any bookstores that you walk in. This is just a simple article on comparison of Tichu cardgame against chess, chinese chess and go.

Tichu vs bots