Koi-Koi yaku: every scoring combination and its points

Koi-Koi points table

Card values (20, 10, 5 and 1) never score by themselves: only yaku do. A yaku made of named cards is complete once you hold them all; the ones marked +1 then gain a point for every further card of the kind. The round’s score is the sum of every yaku the winner holds, then doubled or multiplied as the scoring page explains.

Names follow the game’s own screens: the five 20-point cards are the lights, the 10-point cards the animals (tane), the 5-point cards the tanzaku, and the 1-point cards the plains (kasu). Gokō, Shōbu and Inoshikachō are written with macrons here; you will also see them as Goko, Shobu and Inoshikacho.

Light yaku: Gokō, Shikō, Ame Shikō and Sankō

The five lights are the Crane (January), the Curtain (March), the Moon (August), the Rain (November) and the Phoenix (December). Only one light yaku counts at a time: the one that uses the most lights. The Rain, the Willow card with the calligrapher Ono no Michikaze (Ono no Tōfū) under his umbrella, counts differently: four lights with the Rain are Ame Shikō (7) instead of Shikō (8), the Rain and two other lights make no yaku, and all five are still Gokō (10). The light yaku in detail.

Sake cup yaku: Hanami and Tsukimi

The Chrysanthemum’s Sake cup turns two lights into a party: a drink under the cherry blossoms, or under the full moon. The same cup serves both, so the Curtain, the Moon and the Sake cup together score 5 + 5 = 10.

Animal yaku: Inoshikachō and Tane

Tanzaku yaku: Akatan, Aotan, Chōfuku and Tan

There are ten tanzaku: three red ones with a poem (January to March), three blue ones (June, September, October) and four plain red ones (April, May, July, November). Akatan and Aotan in detail.

The plain yaku

Half the deck, 24 cards, are plains worth 1 point each: two in each month from January to October, the Willow’s Lightning, and three in December. One yaku counts them.

Dealt hands: Teshi and Kuttsuki

Two yaku come from the deal itself and are checked before anyone plays. Either one ends the round at once and scores 6: nobody has called Koi-Koi yet and 6 is below the doubling line, so nothing multiplies it. The player who had it deals the next round. If both players are dealt one, the dealer’s counts (see the rules).

How yaku add up in this game

1. One light yaku at a time. Gokō, Shikō, Ame Shikō and Sankō never count together.
2. Chōfuku replaces Akatan and Aotan.
3. Everything else adds up, and a card may serve several yaku. The Sake cup counts for Hanami, Tsukimi and Tane; the Boar, Deer and Butterflies for Inoshikachō and Tane; the tanzaku for Akatan, Aotan or Chōfuku and for Tan.
4. Yaku grow. After a Koi-Koi call you may stop again at the end of any turn in which your total rises, whether from a new yaku or from one more card for a +1 yaku.

Written rules differ again. Fuda Wiki’s English guide scores only the most valuable yaku of each family (Inoshikachō or Tane, not both), and Japanese Wikipedia describes the +1 for Inoshikachō, Akatan and Aotan as a rule only some players use. The worked scoring examples take these totals through doubling and the Koi-Koi multiplier.

Four cards to watch

• The Rain (yanagi ni Ono no Tōfū) is a light, but Sankō and Shikō are made without it. With it, four lights are Ame Shikō (7) and five are Gokō (10).
• The Sake cup (kiku ni sakazuki) counts for three yaku here: it is one of the nine animals and half of both viewing yaku. In this game it is never a plain; under Nintendo’s rules it is also one.
• The Lightning (yanagi no kasu) is the Willow’s plain: 1 point, one of the ten for Kasu.
• The yellow Paulownia plain looks different from the other two, but it is a plain.

Every card with its month and kind is on the card list, for example the Sake cup.

Remembering the yaku

• Lights count by number: three are 5, four are 8, five are 10, and a four with the Rain drops to 7. The lights are in months 1, 3, 8, 11 and 12.
• Most named sets are 5: Sankō, Inoshikachō, Akatan and Aotan are three cards each, and the two Sake cup yaku are two cards each. The two complete sets are 10: all five lights (Gokō) and all six poem and blue tanzaku (Chōfuku).
• Months for the tanzaku: the poem strips are the first three months; the blue ones are June, September and October.
• Inoshikachō is the name itself: ino (boar), shika (deer), chō (butterfly), from months 7, 10 and 6.
• Counting yaku are 5, 5 and 10: five animals, five tanzaku, ten plains, 1 point each and +1 per card after that.
• The dealt hands are 6 and end the round before it starts.