Janken Cards
- Newt
- May 5
- 5 min read
Updated: May 7
In 2005, the prestigious auction houses Sotheby's and Christie's found themselves in a peculiar situation. Both wanted the rights to auction a valuable Cézanne painting, and the owner, tired of their competitive advances, suggested they settle it with a game of rock-paper-scissors. International teams were assembled, game theory experts consulted, and in the end, Christie's won with "rock" against Sotheby's "scissors" – securing auction rights worth $20 million in commission.
This corporate showdown inspired our newest creation: Janken Cards, a strategic twist on the classic game of chance that has decided fates for centuries.
Janken Cards transforms the instantaneous decision-making of traditional rock-paper-scissors into a game of pre-planned strategy. Players must commit to a sequence of moves before seeing how their opponent responds, creating a delightful tension as each card is revealed.
The deck consists of 65 cards:
18 Rock cards
18 Paper cards
18 Scissors cards
11 No Winner cards (featuring an empty circle)
How It Works
The game-play follows a Martingale approach, where players lay out five cards face-down and then reveal them one by one to determine the winner of each "trick":
The two players sit directly opposite each other over a table
Each player draws 5 cards from the shuffled deck. The balance is left at one side of the playing area, marking the head of the table
The players arrange their cards face-down in aligned rows
The players then simultaneously turn over their cards one at a time, starting with the pair of cards at the head of the table
As in the real world game, Rock beats Scissors, Scissors beats Paper, Paper beats Rock
The No Winner card defers the point to the next trick
If the final trick in the round has a No Winner card, its point goes to the player who won the last trick that didn't involve a No Winner card
The player who wins the most tricks wins the round
Play continues until the pack is exhausted, the overall winner is the player who won the most rounds
Special rule: the sudden-death condition: win three tricks in a row, and you immediately win the round regardless of the remaining cards.
If you want to purchase Janken Cards, they are available printed on demand at Make Playing Cards.
Historical Ken Cards
While our game uses cards, the underlying rock-paper-scissors concept has a rich global history. The Japanese name "Janken" refers to the game's popularity in Japan, where children often use it to settle disputes.
The family of games itself is called Sansukumi-ken (三すくみ拳), but are called ken games for short.
The earliest written reference to the game comes from China during the Han Dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE), where it was called "shoushiling." The modern version with rock, paper, and scissors appeared in Japan in the late 19th century, eventually spreading worldwide.
This is a diagram from an 1809 Japanese book Kensarae sumai zue (拳會角力圖會) showing how originally the hands formed Frog, Snake and Slug, and before that formed the abstract numbers 1,2,3,4,5, with a fist for "no number". The latter game was for when more than two players wanted to play simultaneously.
Inspired by this we made two extra, historically-based games. The first is called Mushiken cards, based on the animal gestures, the second is called Kazuken based on the counting gestures.
Mushiken cards
These cards are based on the traditional hand gestures that prefigured Rock, Paper, Scissors, which are Slug (Namekuji), Frog (Kawazu), and Snake (Hebi).
in this game:
Slug beats Snake
Snake beats Frog
Frog beats Slug
Quoting Wikipedia,
Ken games played with three hand gestures became popular in the 18th century. They were named sansukumi-ken, which translates into "ken of the three who are afraid of one another."[5] The oldest sansukumi-ken game is mushi-ken (虫拳), a game originally from China. In mushi-ken, the "frog" represented by the thumb wins against the "slug" represented by the pinkie finger, which, in turn defeats the "snake" (蛇) represented by the index finger, which wins against the "frog" (蛙).[6] Although this game was imported from China, the Japanese version differs in the animals represented. In adopting the game, the original Chinese characters for centipede or millipede (蚰蜒) were apparently confused with the characters for the "slug" (蛞蝓). The centipede was chosen because of the Chinese belief that the centipede was capable of killing a snake by climbing and entering its head.
Our Mushiken Cards align with our Janken cards. These are the four types of cards:
A pack consists of
• 18 "Slug" cards
• 18 "Frog" cards
• 18 "Snake" cards
11 "No Winner" cards
You can by a set of Mushiken Cards printed on demand at Make Playing Cards here.
Kazuken Cards
The hand gestures shown in Kazuken are based on the same 1809 book. The 5 playing gestures enables more than two people to play. The higher number wins, but 1 defeats 5. Another game, Honken, involved a fist for a 6 value.
These are our cards:
Pointing the thumb alone counted as "one" (ikkō); opening the thumb and forefinger together counted as "two" (ryan); pointing the other three fingers together counted as "three" (san); opening four fingers together while keeping the thumb curled counted as "four" (sū); opening all five digits counted as "five" (go).
There are 65 cards in a pack:
12 "One Finger" cards
12 "Two Fingers" cards
12 "Three Fingers" cards
12 "Four Fingers" cards
12 "Five Fingers" cards
5 "No Winner" cards (empty).
The rules are similar to Mushiken, but allow for more than two people to play.
You can buy a pack of Kazuken Cards printed on demand at Make Playing Cards here.
Honken Cards
We can also play Honken proper with a similarly designed deck.
The fist completely counted as "six" (mui). We added the image to make a sixth figure card. to enable Honken variants.
It has 78 cards
12 "One Finger" cards
12 "Two Fingers" cards
12 "Three Fingers" cards
12 "Four Fingers" cards
12 "Five Fingers" cards
12 "Fist" cards (number 6)
5 "No Winner" cards (fist cards).
This is useful for even larger social groups. You can buy a pack of Kazuken Cards printed on demand at Make Playing Cards here.
Other Ken Games
We have a number of other games in the Ken family, so watch this space to learn more about them.
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