The Existence

I am one of the people who play tong-its personally. Tong-its is a popular game card in the Philippines. This is being played everywhere with adult, teens and even youngsters. Now, my boyfriend don’t let me play tong-its in our neighborhood specially when I am gambling. So when I came here in my brothers house, I used his computer and downloaded tong-its online so that I can play this game without asking my bf’s permission.

The game tong-its can be found at Tong-Its.com and Tong-its.net. But I recommend you the tong-its.net because they’re more faster than the tong-its.com.

I have here some screenshots of the game. This was taken a while ago before I am writing this post.

In tong-its, not an online game, there are rules to follow but it still depends on the rules. Because there are rules that are exempted just like specials and other.

It is played by 3 players, the dealer deals out 12 cards to each player and an extra card for the for them for a total of 13 cards. The dealer will start first, by discarding 3 straight flush or trio (tapon), then the next player (the one to the right) can choose either to take the discarded cards or pick a card from the deck (bunot).

If the player chooses to pick the discarded cards then the player has to discard 3 cards with the card the player picked up. If the player chooses to pick a card from the deck, it will just complete the flush or trio and no need to open their cards. A player also has options to connect (sapaw) to any set of open cards, either by extending the straight flush or adding 1 card to a trio making it a 4 of a kind.

After that move a player has to discard one card to end the turn. One of the best strategies is to drop at least one completed cards to make it difficult for the other player to call a draw. There are also some tong-it things to avoid; out of cards meaning when the deck is gone and one of the players completes their card the game is over.

Each player will count their cards, whoever has the lowest number of cards wins. Tong-it, a player can call this if one is able to drop and connect all the cards at hand. A player can call a draw if one had opened the card and thinks that the opponent has a higher point total. If a player called a draw and nobody opened then the caller wins the game. If a player has burned cards (sunog) meaning the game ended and still has not opened the cards, he has to pay the winner extra (if playing for money).

source: philippinesinsider.com