Pineapple OFC: three cards, keep two
Pineapple is Open Face Chinese poker with a discard, and it's the version you'll actually be dealt. Five deals instead of nine, a genuine decision on every turn, and royalties big enough to make a session interesting.
Last reviewed 9 September 2026
The rules, in full
Same board as any OFC hand: three cards on top, five in the middle, five on the bottom, and the bottom must beat the middle which must beat the top. What changes is the dealing.
| Deal | Cards dealt | You place | You discard | Board total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 5 | 5 | 0 | 5 |
| 2 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 7 |
| 3 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 9 |
| 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 11 |
| 5 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 13 |
- Seventeen cards seen, thirteen placed, four discarded.
- Discards go face-down and are never revealed.
- Everything else — royalties, scoop, fouling, Fantasyland — works exactly as in the standard ruleset.
- Two or three players maximum. Three players use 51 of the 52 cards, so a fourth is impossible.
Pineapple vs Classic OFC
| Pineapple | Classic | |
|---|---|---|
| Deals per hand | 5 | 9 |
| Cards seen | 17 | 13 |
| Choice per deal | 2 of 3 | None — place the card |
| Hand length | ~2 minutes | ~4 minutes |
| Fantasyland frequency | Often | Rare |
| Foul rate | Lower | Higher |
| Max players | 3 | 4 |
The interesting line in that table is "choice per deal". In Classic OFC, six of your nine turns are not decisions at all — a card arrives and there is one sensible seat for it. In Pineapple every single turn asks you a question, which is why it plays like a better game even though it's mathematically looser.
The discard is the game
Most Pineapple advice is really discard advice. Three cards arrive, two go down, and the one you throw away is where the edge is. A working order of priority:
- Throw what fits nowhere. If a card can't improve any row and can't safely fill a seat, it's gone. Easy turns look like this.
- Throw what would force a placement you don't want. A card that fits only in the top row and would raise your top above your middle is a liability, not a card.
- Between two useless cards, throw the one they need. They have four hearts showing and you're holding a heart you can't use — that heart does not go on your board and it does not stay in the deck where they can draw it. It goes in the muck.
- Keep the card that keeps two rows alive. Late in a hand, the best discard is often the one that leaves you with two ways to finish legally instead of one.
How the strategy changes
Pineapple isn't Classic with a discard bolted on; the extra card flow shifts what a good board looks like.
Aim higher on the bottom
You'll see seventeen cards, so a flush on the bottom stops being a lucky outcome and becomes a plan. Two suited cards in your opening five is a reason to commit.
Pairs on top get better
Because your middle has four more chances to grow, a pair on top is less of a trap than it is in Classic. It's still not free — but a pair of kings up top on deal two is a much more reasonable gamble here.
Fantasyland becomes a real target
Queens or better on top happens often enough in Pineapple that Fantasyland should be in your plan for the hand, not a surprise. The whole reason the variant is popular at high stakes is that Fantasyland shows up frequently enough to be worth playing toward.
Counting gets harder, not easier
In Classic, every unseen card is in the deck. In Pineapple, four cards per player are in a face-down muck — invisible and unavailable. Your flush draw is worse than the raw count says, and how much worse depends on how many players are mucking suited cards you need.
Why it took over
Classic OFC has a pacing problem: nine deals, six of which barely involve a decision, times two or three players. A hand takes four minutes and most of it is watching.
Pineapple fixes the pacing and, almost by accident, makes the game better. More cards means more monsters, more monsters means more royalties, and more royalties means the score of a session is driven by the hands where something happened. That's a better gambling game and a better casual game at the same time.
The app deals both, and Pineapple is the one it leads with — it's what tournaments play and what anyone coming from a real table expects to find. Classic sits underneath, unlocked from the start too, as the quieter variant.
Questions people actually ask
What is Pineapple OFC?
A version of Open Face Chinese poker where, after the opening five cards, each deal gives you three cards: you place two on your board and discard one face-down. It takes five deals to fill thirteen seats instead of nine, and the extra card flow makes strong hands much more common.
How many cards do you get in Pineapple OFC?
Five to open, then four rounds of three cards. You place 5 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 = thirteen cards and discard four, so you see seventeen cards in total.
Is Pineapple OFC better than Classic?
For most players yes, and it is what almost every game deals. Hands take half as long, you get a real choice on every single turn instead of being handed one card, and the improved card flow means royalties and Fantasyland come up often enough to matter.
How many players can play Pineapple OFC?
Two or three. Three players use 3 × 17 = 51 of the 52 cards, so three-handed is the hard maximum — there is no room for a fourth board.
Are the discards revealed in Pineapple OFC?
No. Discards go face-down into a muck and are never shown, so an unseen card could be in the deck or in someone's discard pile. That uncertainty is part of what makes counting outs in Pineapple harder than it looks.
Keep reading
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