I am addicted to OFC Pineapple Poker!

How do you know when someone is a OFC Poker addict?

When you ask him what is his wildest fantasy and he replies........ trip aces on top!

What's amazing about this hand was it was in Normal play, was not in Fantasyland!

Recently I am hooked on OFC. If you think PLO is addictive and have a love hate relationship with it, wait till you've tried OFC. OFC stands for Open Face Chinese poker and over the years the rules have evolved greatly making it both a skilled but swingy game. In the last month alone I think I have played more than 20000 hands and mind you, each hand takes like 2-4 minutes to play out. I have also won 4 trophies in OFC so I like to think I know what I am talking about.

I wanted to write a few articles about OFC strategy here and the more I wrote the more I realized how much there is to write about. I have now about 15 pages of strategy so I thought maybe I will hold out and write a book! I love writing but writing a book is a totally different animal. It requires a lot of focus and time, which I have neither. But nevertheless I will continue on this little project (probably take super long) but who knows, maybe I will have a product on the shelves!

Obviously double straight flush will have lots of points!

For those who do not know what OFC is, you should really try it. There are lots of apps that you can play without money online. It is a combination of skill and luck of course but it does not have the stress of bluffing and calling and every hand is exciting and something happening. If you know the game you can skip the stuff below.

53 points in royalties, that's the best I have ever gotten. If you beat this please let me know and send a screenshot

The objective of the game is to get as many points as possible by having a better hand than your opponent and gain bonus points from royalties from special hands like trips, straights, flushes etc. You have to build two 5-card hands on the bottom and middle and a 3-card hand on top. The bottom level has to be the same or stronger than the middle, and the middle the same or stronger than the top. Obviously if you put a better hand on top you will get more bonus points (royalties) but it is harder because you have to beat that hand in your middle and bottom rows. Hence the skill of the game comes into play. You can foul your hand if you do not fulfill this requirement and that's an instant additional 6 points for your opponents. However if you can have QQ or better on top, you are guaranteed a non fouling hand because you will get what's called Fantasyland where you get all your cards in one go and you can arrange them any way you like. Although I have seen one guy accidentally fouling his fantasyland but he was still learning at the time.

It's fun when you don't have to scratch your head about your hand. Obviously the additional 2 card from Aces fantasy helps!

Now the game has evolved into a monster with ultimate mode and jokers. In ultimate mode, you get more cards in fantasyland if you get KK or better. But if you stay in fantasyland (needing quads or better on the bottom row or trips on the top row), you get the bonus cards that you received when entering fantasy. Throwing in a couple more jokers into the mix and the game can be super wild!

Let me know if you have any questions, or love the game yourself but want to improve, drop me a message at happyriverpoker@gmail.com! Love to hear from you.