The strength of the hand is determined by poker hand rankings. As in standard Chinese poker, the back hand must be stronger than or equal to the middle hand and the middle hand must be stronger than or equal to the front hand. Play is in clockwise order and starts with the player left of the dealer. Each player must use thirteen cards consisting of 3 cards in the front hand, 5 cards in the middle hand, and 5 cards in the back hand. Open-face Chinese poker is typically played as a two- to three-person game, though it can also be played with four people. 7th, 2015, TonyBet Poker Ambassador Isabelle Mercier became the first Open-Face Chinese Poker Progressive Pineapple world champion. In December 2014, TonyBet hosted the first-ever World Championship of OFC where Jennifer Shahade won the High Roller and Mikal Blomlie won the Main Event. The game was introduced to the United States in 2012.
Professional poker player Alex Kravchenko, who is credited with introducing the game to the Russian high-stakes community, describes the game as 'spreading like a virus'. The game originated in Finland during the mid-2000s and spread to Russia a few years later. Open-face Chinese poker, OFCP, commonly known as Open Face Chinese or OFC, is a variant of Chinese poker where players receive five cards to start and then one card at a time until each player has a 13 card hand legal or not.
