3 Patti Rules: Complete Guide for New Players

Teen Patti, also called 3 Patti, is played with three cards and a betting progression. Understanding the hand rankings and the blind-versus-seen mechanic is enough to sit at your first table. Everything else — reading opponents, managing pot odds, timing your fold — comes from playing.

This guide covers standard Classic rules. Variant-specific rules are explained at the end.

The Cards and the Deal

Teen Patti uses a standard 52-card deck without jokers in Classic format. Each player receives three cards face-down. No cards are shared between players — each person plays only the three they were dealt.

Betting begins before anyone looks at their cards, and the round ends when all but one player has folded, or two players reach a showdown.

Hand Rankings: Strongest to Weakest

Hands are ranked in this order:

• Trail (Three of a Kind) — three cards of the same rank. Three aces is the strongest possible hand. Three twos is the weakest trail.
• Pure Sequence (Straight Flush) — three consecutive cards of the same suit. Ace-King-Queen of spades, for example. Ace can be used as the highest card (A-K-Q) or the lowest (A-2-3).
• Sequence (Straight) — three consecutive cards of mixed suits. Same numerical order as a pure sequence but without the suit match. Lower-ranked than a pure sequence.
• Color (Flush) — three cards of the same suit, not in consecutive order.
• Pair — two cards of the same rank, plus one unrelated card. Between two pairs, the higher pair wins. If pairs are equal, the side card (kicker) decides.
• High Card — none of the above apply. The hand is judged by the highest individual card, then the second, then the third.

A detail that confuses new players: a pure sequence and a regular sequence are both three consecutive cards, but only the one where all three share the same suit ranks higher. Mixing them up at the showdown is one of the most common beginner mistakes.

Blind vs. Seen: The Core Mechanic

At the start of each round, every player decides whether to play blind or to look at their cards and play seen.

Blind players act without looking at their hand. Each blind bet costs the current stake amount. Playing blind costs less per round and can signal strength even when you do not know your own cards — opponents have to respect the possibility that you hold a strong hand.

Seen players have looked at their cards. A seen player must bet at least twice the current stake. The cost of playing seen is higher, but you have full information about your own hand.

A player can choose to look at their cards at any point during the round, converting from blind to seen. Once you look, you cannot go back.

Tactically, staying blind longer reduces your cost per round and keeps opponents uncertain. But seen players with strong hands will often raise aggressively, and eventually a blind player has to decide whether to fold, keep paying, or look and respond with information.

How Betting Works

The player to the dealer's left places the boot — a mandatory starting bet that seeds the pot. Betting then moves clockwise.

Each player in turn must either bet or fold. If you bet, you must match at least the current stake if you are seen, or half that amount if you are blind. Players can also raise, which increases the stake for everyone remaining in the round.

The round ends when only one player remains after all others fold (that player wins the pot without a showdown), or when two players reach a sideshow or final showdown and compare hands.

Sideshow is a request from a seen player to the previous seen player to compare hands privately. The player with the weaker hand must fold. A sideshow cannot be requested from a blind player.

Winning the Round

If all players except one fold at any point, the last player standing wins the entire pot regardless of their cards.

If two players reach a showdown, they reveal their cards and the higher-ranked hand wins. If hands are exactly equal (possible with colour or high-card hands across suits), the player who did not request the showdown wins.

The Four Most Common Variants

Classic follows the rules above. Standard hand rankings apply.

AK47 designates Aces, Kings, Fours, and Sevens as wild cards — they can substitute for any other card to complete a hand. The abundance of wilds makes strong hands significantly more common, which means the bar for winning at a showdown rises. Trails and pure sequences appear far more frequently than in Classic, so a pair that would win comfortably in Classic is often beaten here.

Muflis inverts the entire hand ranking. The weakest hand in Classic — a high card — becomes the strongest in Muflis. A trail, normally unbeatable, becomes the worst possible hand. Players who switch from Classic to Muflis without adjusting often misjudge hand strength in the first several rounds. Teen Patti Guru includes Muflis as one of its playable variants.

Joker introduces a randomly selected card as a wild each round. Every card of that rank becomes a joker for the duration of the hand. The threshold for competitive hands varies round by round depending on which card is chosen as the wild.

Before You Play on an App

Always check the active rule set on the table screen before joining. Apps may run a specific variant or a modified version of Classic, and minor differences in joker handling or sideshow rules exist between platforms.

For a breakdown of which apps include specific variants, see our Teen Patti Guru page or browse the full Yono Games section. If you are new to card games on Android and want to understand what permissions an app should and should not request before you install, our Android app permissions guide covers what to check.