NUMBER OF PLAYERS 3 to 10Warning! Danger! Attention! This game can lead to swollen knuckles and sore hands. Slapjack is the quintessential “slap the table” game, where you try to capture cards by slapping (not metaphorical slaps—we mean literal smacks) each jack and pair turned up on the table.
NUMBER OF PLAYERS 3 to 10
HOW TO DEAL Use a fifty-two-card deck, and deal the entire deck (it’s OK if one or two players have an extra card).
WINNING The goal is to capture every card in the deck. If you do this, you win the game.
HOW TO PLAY The player to the left of the dealer turns up a single card and places it in the center of the table, within equal reach of all players. It’s very important how this card is turned up. First off, turn it over quickly—it’s not fair to flip cards slowly, since you’ll see them before your opponents. Similarly, flip cards so that all players can see them at roughly the same moment (this usually means flipping cards from the side, rather than away from you off the deck).
The next clockwise player turns up the top card on her pile and places it, face up, on the table. The process continues until either a jack is turned up or a card of matching rank is turned up (e.g., 5 on a 5,10 on a 10, etc.). When either happens, all players rush to physically slap the card on the table—this is called a slapjack.
The slapjack is won by the first player to slap the proper card on the table. The fun part begins when more than one player slaps the cards. Chaos ensues, along with some very sore hands. The rule of thumb here is that if your hand is lowest in the pile, you win! When you win a slapjack, add all cards on the table to your existing pile and then shuffle your pile.
If a player mistakenly slaps at any card, he gives one card from his pile to the player whose turn it is. You’re not necessarily out of the game when you run out of cards; instead, you are allowed one final chance to win cards, at the next slapjack. If you don’t win cards on the next slapjack, you are out of the game.
VARIATION: SNAP!
This is a similar but gentler game—no physical slapping is involved. Cards are not played to a central pile on the table. Instead, each player turns up the top card of her individual piles and plays it directly in front of her. Whenever the cards in front of two players match, the first player to shout “Snap!” wins both piles and places the newly captured cards face-down in his own pile. If two players declare “Snap!” at the exact same moment, take both piles and move them to the center of the table—this is called a Snap Pot. When a matching card eventually is turned up, the first player to declare “Snap Pot!” wins the Snap Pot cards. The game ends when one player captures all fifty-two cards.