This article first appeared in the Jan/Feb 2010 issue of World Gaming magazine.
Fan Tan is a traditional Chinese game that was once a popular game of choice for many Chinese gamblers both in China and abroad. The game’s popularity has decreased over the years but you can still find it being played in Macau Casinos. Fan Tan is essentially a very easy game.
The house/casino covers a group of white buttons. The buttons are then removed four at a time until you are left with 1, 2, 3 or 4 buttons in the middle of the table. The betting revolves around these four possible outcomes. Here are the five ways to bet in the game of Fan Tan. (House commission is usually paid at 5% on any winning bet, like a winning bet on the banker in Baccarat.)
The first betting option is called Fan, in which you directly bet on 1, 2, 3 or 4. You have a one in four chance of being correct so you are paid three times your money for a winning bet (3/1).
The second betting option is called Nim. This bet covers two of the four outcomes. One of them will be a win, and the other a draw (or push). The odds for a winning bet here is 2/1.
The third betting option is called Kok. This also bets two of four outcomes. In this bet, however, you either win or lose and there is no draw. The odds for a winning bet here is 1/1 or even money.
The fourth betting option is called Ar Tan. This bets on three of the four outcomes. Two of them will win and one will draw. The odds for a winning bet here is 1/2 or twos on.
The fifth betting option is called Sam Mun. This bets on three of the four outcomes. As long as you avoid the one option that you left out you will win. The odds for a winning bet here is 1/3 or threes on.
As you can see, you can bet small to win big by betting the Fan option or you can alternatively bet big to win small by betting the Ar Tan and Sam Mun options.
Many experienced Fan Tan players believe that there are two main principles for choosing what bets to make: the first is to choose the type of wager according to your performance. You may choose to increase your stake after a draw or win with the view to gaining bigger profits. ‘Bet big when the going is good and be more conservative when it is not’ is a theory that many believe will yield better results.
The second very popular way to bet on the game is to bet the Ar Tan and Sam Mun bets over a long period of time. As these bets only pay a small percentage of your initial stake you need success over many bets to make a really good profit.
Many players follow the pattern of results just as they do in Baccarat. The pattern that most players look for in Fan Tan is called skips. Skips means one of the four numbers comes up less often in a sequence of results. If players see this pattern they can use the Sam Mun betting option to cover everything but that one particular option that is failing to come up.
Skips can often occur 10 or 20 times in a row. When this happens, players can take advantage of this opportunity to bet against that number until the streak ends. One local account has the highest record for a string of skips at 80 consecutive games, with the run lasting over four hours.
You can see the appeal of this game, so keep an eye out for Fan Tan next time you’re on the casino floor.
