[4] Korean poet Jang Hon (1759-1828) wrote that the game dates back to the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368).

A set of madiao consists of 40 cards of four suits: Each card of myriads or tens (of myriads) along with the zero cash was illustrated with one of the 108 Stars of Destiny of the Chinese novel the Water Margin attributed to Shi Nai'an.

In the suits of cash and strings, the pips were copied from banknotes such as the jiaozi and jiaochao.

[8] The banker decides what the stakes are for the hand (it should be an even number so it can be split and within the margins agreed by consensus).

Everyone except the player holding the Hundred Myriad has to pay for the following: The first person who was dealt leads.

Players can also discard (slough) their card face down if they can't or won't win the trick (this is similar to Tien Gow, Tam cúc, Six Tigers, Ganjifa, Kaiserspiel, and Brazilian Truco).

The Hundred Myriad is an important card to protect or capture as it figures in many bonuses.

[4] However, the game continued to remain popular and was played by government officials as well as members of the imperial family.

During the Qing dynasty, the popularity of three-suited games led to the printing of stripped decks.

Some draw-and-discard games combined multiple decks of three-suited cards leading to the birth of mahjong in the mid-19th century.