Go-Stop (고스톱)
Go-Stop is Korea's best-loved card game — the one families play around the table
at Chuseok and Seollal. It is played with hwatu (화투), a 48-card flower deck
of twelve months with four cards each.
You capture cards by matching months, sort them into four scoring piles, and the
moment you are far enough ahead you face the question the game is named for:
Stop and bank what you have, or Go and keep playing for more.
The two-player game is known in Korea as Matgo (맞고). The game is also
called Godori (고도리), after its five-point three-bird set.
Objective
Be the first player to reach the point threshold and call Stop.
The deck
Twelve months of four cards. Every card is one of four types:
months 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12
Ribbons come in three sets: hongdan (홍단, red poetry — months 1, 2, 3),
cheongdan (청단, blue poetry — 6, 9, 10) and chodan (초단, plain — 4, 5,
7). December's ribbon belongs to no set.
Three cards are double junk (쌍피) and count as two junk each. The
September sake cup is special: it can count as an animal or as a double
junk — you are never asked which, because the game always counts it whichever
way scores you more.
The three godori birds are the February bush warbler, the April cuckoo and
the August geese.
Bonus cards (보너스패). Two extra cards beyond the traditional 48, making a
50-card pack. One counts as two junk, the other as three junk. They
belong to no month, so they can never be matched. Playing one banks it straight
into your junk pile, you draw a replacement from the stock, and you still play
a card that turn — banking a bonus is free, not your move. (If the stock is
empty there is nothing to draw, so the banking is the turn.) A bonus card turned
up from the stock during your flip banks the same way, and another is turned up
behind it.
Setup
The deal changes with the number of players:
The rest of the deck becomes a face-down draw pile. A bonus card dealt face-up
to the field could never be captured, so it is given to the dealer and the
field is topped up, as at a real table. The dealer wears a D on their seat.
A single hand is the unit of play here, so the dealer never changes — there is
no rotation to follow between hands.
Four players is a house rule here. In the traditional four-handed game
(gwangpalli, 광팔이) four people sit down but only three actually play —
one sits out each hand and is paid for the brights in their hand. That works
at a physical table but leaves a player with nothing to do on a screen, so in
this version all four players are dealt in and play every hand, using the
same 7-card deal and 6-card field as the three-player game.
Taking a turn
1.
Play a card from your hand onto the field. If it matches the month of
a card already on the field, you capture both. If the field holds more than
one card of that month, you choose which one to take. If nothing matches, your
card simply stays on the field.
2.
Flip the top card of the draw pile onto the field. If it matches a field
card by month, you capture both.
3.
Pass the turn. The turn does not end on its own: the flip is worth
watching, so the board waits on an End of turn panel until you press
Pass turn.
Captured cards go into your four piles — brights, animals, ribbons and junk —
which is how you read your score.
The bomb (폭탄)
If you hold three cards of one month and the fourth is on the field, you
may drop a bomb: play all three at once, take all four cards, and take one
junk card from every opponent.
It costs you tempo, not just cards. Three cards left your hand in a single turn,
so your next two turns only flip the deck — you play nothing from hand until
the hands are level again. Whether that trade is worth making is the point of
the move, so the bomb is never forced: click a bomb-capable card (it is outlined
in gold) and choose Drop the bomb, or click the matching field card to capture
with a single card as usual.
Shaking (흔들기) is not implemented, so the bomb needs no announcement first.
Scoring
Brights (gwang)
•
3 brights = 3 points — but only 2 if one of them is the December Rain bright
Ribbons (tti)
•
5 ribbons = 1 point, plus 1 for each ribbon beyond the fifth
•
Each completed ribbon set (hongdan, cheongdan, chodan) = 3 points
Animals (yeol)
•
5 animals = 1 point, plus 1 for each animal beyond the fifth
•
All three godori birds = 5 points
Junk (pi)
•
10 junk = 1 point, plus 1 for each beyond the tenth
•
Double junk counts as two
Go or Stop
The moment your score reaches the threshold, you must choose:
•
Stop — the hand ends immediately and you bank your score. You win.
•
Go — play continues. Each Go adds +1 point to your eventual score, and
from the fourth Go onward your whole total doubles. The risk is real: if an
opponent reaches the threshold and calls Stop first, they take the hand and
your Go is worth nothing.
You are only asked again once your score has actually gone up since your last Go.
How a hand ends
•
A player calls Stop — that player wins the hand.
•
Every hand is played out and nobody called Stop — the hand is drawn, with
no score.
Not included in this version
For clarity this version leaves out several traditional extras: the bak
penalties (gwang-bak, pi-bak, go-bak), shaking (heundeulgi, 흔들기),
ppeok (뻑), jjok (쪽), the sweep (쓸), and multi-hand match play. A
single hand is the unit of play. Of the junk-stealing plays, only the bomb
is implemented.
Card art
The hwatu card faces are used under
CC BY-SA 4.0 — by Spenĉjo
(Wikimedia Commons), from work by Marcus Richert, based on hanafuda graphics by
Louie Mantia, Jr. Full credits are in the
hwatu-deck package README.
The card back is original Gameweave artwork.