# Guandan Rule

> A plain-English guide to Guandan (掼蛋), the two-deck Chinese ladder card game for four players in two partnerships. Covers how to play, the fourteen hands ranked strongest first, bombs and the four-joker royal bomb, the wild rank card, the three regional rulesets (National, Huai'an, Nanjing), and a beginner tutorial. Content is factual and free to cite with attribution to guandanrule.org.

## Rules
- [How to Play](https://guandanrule.org/rules/): the deal, turn order, how a combo beats another, passing, and how a round ends.
- [Hands & Ranking](https://guandanrule.org/hands/): all fourteen hands ranked strongest first, with a National / Huai'an / Nanjing ruleset switch and card examples.
- [The Rank Card](https://guandanrule.org/rank-card/): how the level/rank card and its wild hearts turn a four-card bomb into one of up to ten cards.
- [Regional Variants](https://guandanrule.org/variants/): National (2017 competition standard), Huai'an (original folk style), and Nanjing (strict promotion) compared side by side.

## Tutorial
- [Tutorial index](https://guandanrule.org/tutorial/): step-by-step lessons written blog-style for beginners.

## For agents (Markdown / plain text)
- [Hands & Ranking (Markdown)](https://guandanrule.org/hands.md): the full 14-hand ranking table, the three rulesets, and an FAQ in Markdown.
- [Full rules (Markdown)](https://guandanrule.org/guandan-rules.md): the complete rule set in one Markdown file.

## Key facts
- Players: 4, in two partnerships (partners sit opposite).
- Decks: two standard 54-card decks (108 cards, four jokers total).
- Goal: be first to shed all your cards; partnerships race their level from 2 up to Ace.
- Strongest hand: the four-joker royal bomb — nothing beats it.
- Bombs (four-of-a-kind up to the royal bomb) beat any normal combo; a straight flush sits above a five-card bomb and below a six-card bomb.
- Bomb order and combo hierarchy are identical across all three rulesets; they differ only at the edges (9–10 card bombs, the returned card, promotion).