Tongo! Although I don’t think you have to shout Tongo unlike when you play Dabo. This
card game, like Dabo, which I covered last week, was invented by the Ferengi and done
with the purpose of wagering latinum slips, strips and bars. Unlike Dabo, which is basically
space roulette, Tongo is more like poker, although it still possesses a specialised
play wheel and… dice? Just as Dabo however, the game was designed
to be something played in the background where you could easily identify the flow of the
game, there was no actual set rules in how to play. However, unlike Poker, the Tongo
card game has far more nuanced rules and a whole bunch of terminology when making wagers
alongside considering the composition of cards in the player’s hand.
This made playing Tongo a mixture of randomness, bluffing, strategy and reading exchange values
and a bunch of stuff. People like Quark go on to say that the game is too complex for
a computer to effectively master, probably when combined with the need to bluff and things.
The goal was to accumulate a better hand than the opponents, and if it drew a match with
the rolled dice, you could win. Sounds simple in principle, but as there was no ruleset,
the rest was made up on the fly, including the nature of wagers and the types of hand
that a player could accumulate. The actions a player could take were to “Confront”
which seems to basically “Call” out the other players to end the round, “Retreat”,
which is probably the equivalent of a “fold” where you withdraw yourself from the game
in order to mitigate your losses. And there were also the actions to acquire and evade.
First the number of players is decided and they bring a pile of value to the table and
prepare it for play. The amount entered into the game is set for every player to make a
level starting field. If a player wants to increase their starting amount, they can do
so from their own funds at later time during gameplay, this was called conversion of funds
and an action to be taken on your turn. Once the players are established and the value
of latinum set, the cards are delt to the players from two decks of differing shapes,
circle cards and rectangle. Play is conducted around a wheel, divided up into eight sections
that can spin and it has the pot in the middle that contains the bets from all players. The
circle cards are dealt to the player’s hand while the rectangles are placed on the table
before the players, some facedown, some faceup. Both of these sets of cards, the ones in the
hand and before the player on the table are used in constructing the player’s hand,
like in Blackjack or Poker. Players then took turns to take an action on their turn, such
as acquire, which was used to exchange a card, or reveal one of the facedown one on the table,
but in order to do this, the player had to add to the pot in the middle before “Selling”
at the end of their turn to state the ante for the next player.
Exchanging allows for a player switch out a card in their hand with another and again,
this requires a player to add to the pot. In fact, it’s safe to assume every action
you wanted to take, you needed to “buy” for. Evading is to simply avoid your turn,
which could be useful if you didn’t want to alter your hand, or didn’t wish to add
any more action funds to the pot. Evading ends the turn without setting a new sell price
for the next player however, resetting a potentially escalating wager. Evading is therefore a way
to play it safe by keeping the bets low and minimizing your contribution to the pot, but
you cannot build your hand either. At the end of your turn, you spin the wheel,
which changes the rectangle cards in front of everyone (unless it comes to rest at the
same position, I guess) and therefore the potential hands, either aiding or hindering
a player’s full hand. I imagine this would be a good time to attempt to read another
player, because if there was a certain setup from the revealed rectangle cards that would
benefit a player, inexperienced players may track those desired cards as the wheel spins
or show a “tell” if it comes to a stop before them.
These actions continue around the wheel, the value in the pot building from player to player
until a player is ready to confront, where they feel, they have the winning hand, made
from their held circle cards and the squares on the table immediately before them. We don’t
know the full list of available hand combinations, for two reasons. Firstly, it was all made
up on the fly, and secondly, the cards themselves are specific Tongo decks, so a 100% direct
52 card deck to a Tongo translation is not really possible. Although I do wonder what
the suits and history would be behind a Ferengi deck of cards. A King would be a Nagus surely?
What we do know is that the potential hands are named after various levels of business
terminology, with a Full Monopoly being the highest possible hand, akin to a Royal Flush.
So, there is the basics of how to play Tongo, it certainly has all the layout for a potentially
playable game even though watching it unfold on screen doesn’t always make it seems so.
It is basically space poker, but with an extra layer of added randomness caused by the wheel
and the shifting hands. In terms of tactics, you have the bluffing and hand building of
Poker, as well as the ability to reset the wagers with actions like evade. Because a
player’s hand is made up of what is literally in their hand as well as before them on the
table, a viable tactic might be to reveal as many cards on the table as possible and
make a hand that matches up with as many of them as possible so that you stand a better
chance of a strong Confrontation. Or you could hedge your bets on a single hand and wait
for the table cards you need to wind up in front of you.
Huh? What about the dice? What dice? There are no dice in Tongo… ah damn it. Unless…
in order to simulate the randomness of a spinning without the Tongo wheel, you could roll a
dice and rotate the rectangle card sets clockwise that amount? That’s a stretch isn’t it.
I have no idea where the dice come in. In researching for this video, I ended up
visiting all corners of the internet, but I feel that I do need to give a coupe a shout
out including “Beard Vs Geek’s” video on how to play where he also covers the idea
of indexing and those sorts of other actions that a player can perform and that there is
a conversion of the game into an Earth-based deck that has been created can be found easily
enough by a quick google search. I’m not going to cover how to play a real
version of it here, and I wouldn’t play for money, but we do see stand in discs used
as “monopoly money” at times, so I’d probably play Tongo like that for fun. Thanks
for watching this quick break down of a game that as depicted on screen couldn’t work
without some serious finagling. Thanks again, I’ve been Ric and I’ll see you later,
goodbye!