Tane, Tan and Kasu: yaku by number of cards

How many cards each yaku needs

Every card that is not one of the five lights belongs to exactly one of these kinds, so every such capture moves one of the three counts. The values are the same in Nintendo’s published table^[1].

Tane: the nine animal cards

The tane are the cards with an animal or a bird, plus the Bridge and the Sake cup^[4]. Any five make Tane. Three of them also make Inoshikachō, and with the Boar, the Deer and the Butterflies among your five this game scores both yaku; Nintendo’s table drops Tane then^[1]. With only nine tane, just one player can make Tane in a round.

Tan: the ten tanzaku

Any five of the ten tanzaku make Tan: the three poem tanzaku, the three blue ones and the four plain red ones all count. With Akatan, Aotan or Chōfuku this game scores Tan beside them, while Nintendo’s table drops it^[1]. Both players can make Tan in the same round.

Kasu: the 24 plains

Ten kasu, the plain cards, make Kasu. There are 24: two in each month from January to October, one in November and three in December. November’s plain is the red and black Lightning, and one December plain has a yellow band; both count like any other plain. The Sake cup is not a plain in this game, so Kasu takes ten of these 24.

Points here and under Nintendo’s rules

The three yaku add up with each other and with every other yaku. What differs under Nintendo’s rules is the Sake cup: Nintendo counts it as a plain as well as a tane^[1].

Small yaku and the koi-koi call

Each extra card raises your total by 1, and each rise gives you a new choice to stop or call koi-koi. So a small yaku can end a round: if your opponent is one card from a large yaku, stopping with Tan or Kasu takes the round first.

They also punish a koi-koi. If you have called once and your opponent then makes Kasu and stops, they score 1 × 2 = 2 and you score nothing, because the multiplier goes to whoever wins. Under Nintendo’s rules the result is the same: there a koi-koi doubles the score of an opponent who then makes a yaku^[1].

Seeds, strips and chaff

Tane means “seed”: the word comes from tanemomi, seed rice, and marks the main cards. Kasu (粕) means dregs or chaff, from kasumomi, and marks the lowest cards^[4]. Tan is short for tanzaku. Games that count card points value them at 10, 5 and 1; Koi-Koi uses only how many you hold.

The Lightning is the odd plain out: a thunder drum and a demon’s hand in red and black. Some regions played the willow cards as wild cards, the willow plain came to be coloured red, and a design modelled on Ōtsu-e folk painting was adopted for it^[4]. In Hachi-Hachi all four November cards count as kasu when hands are checked for hand yaku^[4][6].

The Sake cup is counted as a plain as well in many rule books, a custom linked to the chrysanthemum festival of the ninth day of the ninth month^[4] (the story of the Sake cup).

Playing with the counts

• They build up on their own. Every capture that is not a light adds to one of the three counts, so they grow while you play for other yaku.
• Watch both players’ counts. Hover over or tap a captured card to see its owner’s progress, such as “Kasu 7/10” or “Tane 4/5”, and “out of reach” once the yaku can no longer be made.
• Tane goes to one player. Once either player holds five tane, the other cannot make Tane this round.
• Not every card comes out. At most 16 of the 24 draw-pile cards are turned over in a round, so count on the cards you have seen.

House rules

• The Sake cup counts as a tane and a plain in many rules, Nintendo’s included^[1][5]; others count it as one or the other, not both, or only as a tane^[3][2].
• The Sake cup, the Lightning or the yellow Paulownia plain may each count as two plains^[3]. In Korean Go-Stop the cup is usually counted either as an animal or as two plains^[5].
• Nintendo does not count Tane beside Inoshikachō, or Tan beside Akatan and Aotan^[1].

This game counts the Sake cup only as a tane and every plain as one, and counts Tane and Tan beside the named yaku; no room setting changes that. The house rules page compares these rules.

Questions