As Open-Face Chinese Poker continues to grow in popularity, attracting players from all over the world, the rules of the game are being tweaked and exploited. Changing the rules of Hold’em would seem blasphemous to a long-time player of that game, and the same applies to many other variants, but the relative newness of OFC, and the fact that the game itself was spawned when someone twisted the rules of standard Chinese Poker, has left it open to interpretation.

One of the most exciting changes comes in the form of Pineapple Open-Face Chinese Poker, a game that is played and adored by Shaun Deeb and friends, who were some of the first US poker pros to adopt OFC. Pineapple speeds up the game somewhat and adds an extra element of excitement, the fact that it also increases the chances of scoring royalties (the points which lead to payment) and getting into Fantasy Land (the goal of many OFC players) means that it also drastically increases risk and reward.

Pineapple can only be played with two or three players as the deck will not accommodate game sizes any larger than this. As in normal OFC, players each get 5 cards to begin with and they have to build three hands from those cards. It is after this round that things change, instead of the 1 card in OFC, in Pineapple players get three cards, of which they must use two (with the other being discarded face down). The rounds continue in this fashion until all 13 cards are dealt, and the winning hands are determined in the same way as in standard OFC.