Tongo Tongo was a strategic Ferengi game that was a combination of cards and roulette and which was played with two to eight players . The object of the game was to win by acquiring as much wealth as possible . On a given turn , a player could " confront " , " evade " , " acquire " , or " retreat " . Each venture had a " risk " amount , a " buy " amount , and a " sell " amount , where the risk amount was equal to the sell amount minus the buy amount . Other possible actions a player could take include " indexing the margin " , " indexing the exchange " , " leveraging the buy - in " , and " converting reserves " . ( ) Possible tongo hands included a " full consortium " and a " total monopoly " ( the latter being higher than the former ) . ( ) According to Jadzia Dax , the key to tongo was " to confront when you ' re sure you ' re in a better position than the other players . And if your cards match the roll of the dice , then you win . " ( ) According to Quark , tongo was more than just " number - crunching " ; they had yet to create a computer that could master the intricacies of the game . ( ) A Global Tongo Championship was held each year on Ferenginar . As of 2373 , Zek had won the tournament for twenty - seven years in a row . He also played it for fun . ( ) Miles O ' Brien once played tongo against a Ferengi privateer and a Romulan mercenary . ( ) Quark was on a 208 - game winning streak over a month - long period during mid - 2374 when he beat Jadzia for his 207th victory , causing Worf to lose a bet with O ' Brien for a bottle of scotch whisky . O ' Brien enlisted Julian Bashir to help beat Quark and end his streak , but Bashir failed when Quark distracted him with talk of Jadzia and Worf ' s recent marriage to chalk up his 208th victory . ( ) During his association with , when he believed he might be killed , Quark made a gift of his tongo wheel to Jadzia . ( ) In early 2375 , Quark suggested that letting Worf beat him in a game of tongo would be a great battle and would enable Jadzia to enter " Sto - vo - kor " . O ' Brien told him it would only be enough if he had to " " carve his way through a hundred Jem ' Hadar to reach the table . " " ( ) Later that year , Quark wanted to play tongo in Vic Fontaine ' s lounge , although since the holoprogram was period - specific he was unable to . ( ) Background information . Hilary J . Bader created the name tongo while Ira Steven Behr expanded the concept for " Rules of Acquisition " . ( " " , p 97 ) The script for states that tongo can be best described as a cross between poker , mah - jongg , and craps . There were never any " official " rules established ; according to Ron D . Moore the writers had only a vague idea of what the game was actually about , and mostly just made it up as they went along . " " In an interview on StarTrek . com , Armin Shimerman mentioned that the lack of rules caused continuity problems in terms of which cards were important and how many were dealt . In a deleted scene cut from the final draft of , Tom Paris complained that " " the only people who want to talk to me [ from the Alpha Quadrant ] are my father and a Ferengi Tongo dealer who claims I still owe him three hundred strips of latinum . " "