Bầu cua cá cọp

Bầu cua cá cọp, whose name translates roughly as gourd crab fish tiger, is a traditional Vietnamese gambling game played with three dice, commonly brought out during Vietnamese New Year celebrations. Rather than the usual numbered pips, each die face carries a picture of one of six creatures or symbols: fish, prawn, crab, rooster, calabash and stag or tiger. Players place bets on a board printed with the same six symbols, wagering on which images will turn up when the dealer rolls the three dice. Payouts scale with how many dice match a player's chosen symbol: one matching die returns the original stake plus an equal amount in winnings, two matching dice pay double the stake, and three matching dice pay triple, while bets that do not match go into a pool collected by the dealer. The game is recognized as the original Vietnamese form of a wider regional family of picture-dice betting games, related to Hoo Hey How as played in China, Cambodia's Klah Klok, and Western equivalents such as Crown and Anchor and chuck-a-luck.