NUMBER OF PLAYERS 2Try Beggar Your Neighbor whenever your games of Egyptian Ratscrew get out of hand. The games are very similar, minus the hand slapping.
NUMBER OF PLAYERS 2
HOW TO DEAL Divide a fifty-two-card deck roughly in half, and place the halves face down in front of each player.
WINNING The goal is to avoid running out of cards. The first player to do so loses the game.
HOW TO PLAY The game starts with one player turning up the top card of his face-down pile, and placing the card face-up in the center of a table. The other player then does the same.
There are two kinds of cards: honors (A, K, Q, J) and ordinary (10 through 2). The game continues until one player turns up an honors card. When this happens, the opponent pays a penalty by turning over cards from her stack to the center pile: four cards for an ace, three cards for a king, two cards for a queen, one card for a jack. After the penalty is paid, the original player takes the face-up pile of cards from the table and places them face down at the bottom of his own personal stack of cards.
You’re in luck if you happen to turn up an honors card when paying a penalty. The roles immediately switch, and your opponent must now pay you the appropriate penalty.