Outdoing Your Friends: Beggar My Neighbor

Beggar My Neighbor, also known as Beat Your Neighbor Out of Doors and Strip Jack Naked, requires no strategy or planning at all, making it a great game for kids and for social situations. The objective of the game is to win all the cards from the other players.

To play Beggar My Neighbor, you need the following:

Two to six players: You can play with more than six players in a pinch.
A standard deck of 52 cards: With four or more players, add a second deck of cards. A great advantage of this game is that you don’t really need a complete deck of cards — a card or two gone missing is almost irrelevant. Don’t forget to remove the jokers!

To begin, one player deals out the whole deck in a clockwise rotation, dealing the cards face-down and one at a time so each player gets about the same number of cards. You don’t look at your cards; you form them into a neat pile, face-down in front of you.

The player to the left of the dealer turns over the top card from his pile and places it in the center of the table (or floor, if you want to sprawl out).

Different things can happen now, depending on what card the first player turns over:

If the value of the card is between 2 and 10, it has no special significance, and the play goes on to the next player.
If the card is a court card (an ace, king, queen, or jack), the game becomes a little more exciting. The next player has to pay a forfeit, meaning she has to turn over some of her cards and place them onto the central pile:
- If the first card up is an ace, the second player must turn over four cards one by one onto the middle pile.
- If the first card is a king, the next player has to pay three cards.
- If the first card is a queen, the second player must pay two cards.
- If the first card is a jack, the second player turns up only one card.

If all the cards the second player turns over are between 2 and 10, the first player who turned over the court card takes up the whole pile and puts it under his personal pile, face-down. If the second player turns over another court card during the course of the forfeit, she pays the debt off, and the second player doesn’t have to turn over any more cards. Instead, the third player must pay the forfeit dictated by the second court card and either turn over a court card in the process, or allow the second player to pick up the whole central pile if no court card comes.

When you have no more cards left, you’re out, and the game continues without you. If you run out of cards in the middle of paying a forfeit for an ace, king, or queen, you are out of the game. In games of more than two players, the previous player picks up the pile of cards, and the next player starts afresh. The last player in the game — the one who accumulates the whole deck — wins.

Your success at Beggar My Neighbor depends on the luck of the draw; if you get a good smattering of court cards, you have a good chance to win. If someone feels bad because he lost, you may want to remind him of the luck factor. But don’t forget to congratulate him if he wins!

Because Beggar My Neighbor can go on for a long time — making it ideal for long car journeys, waiting for planes, or similar situations — you can agree that the player with the most cards at a certain predefined time is the winner.

KIDS AND CARD GAMES

These days, most children seem to be born with a remote or video-game controller in their hands. However, some children are lucky enough to receive decks of cards when they’re young.

Teaching children how to play cards is fun — both for them and for you! Children get an opportunity to interact with others, revel in the challenge of a game, and enjoy a sense of mastery. Card games also foster a strong sense of belonging and a connection to the family or social group.

In a more tangible sense, card games can enhance a child’s skills. To play card games, children must master rules, develop mental strategies, understand objectives, evaluate their (and their opponents’) strengths and weaknesses, and make plans. The games also force them to respond quickly and to deal socially with others.

Some studies suggest that card players develop better problem-solving and lateral-thinking skills (the ability to “think outside the box”). Developing competence in one field can improve a child’s self-confidence to learn in other areas. Therefore, cards can increase a child’s scores in math and critical thinking, as well as improve his social skills.

Finally, card games — like other cognitively engaging activities, including chess, backgammon, and crossword puzzles — are cited as excellent activities for keeping the brain supple and engaged throughout life, potentially delaying the onset of Alzheimer's disease and other memory disabilities.

Snap, Animals, and Slapjack, Oh My

Snap, Animals, and Slapjack are close cousins in the family of games that focus on acquiring your opponents’ cards (such as Beggar My Neighbor; see the previous section). For these games, speed is the key to victory. The player with the quickest reactions wins. Snap, Animals, and Slapjack are among the few card games that depend almost entirely on physical dexterity.

Snap

Get ready for a fast and furious game! Snap is all about mental reaction time, and one of the few games in which luck plays no part at all.

To play Snap, you need the following:

Two or more players. There is no formal upper limit, but if you play with more than six players, the neighbors may complain about the noise.
A standard deck of 52 cards. Play Snap with a single deck of cards if you have fewer than four players; add a second deck if more players compete. Playing this game with a used deck is a good idea — the cards can take a beating (literally).

You don’t need a full deck of cards — a card or two can be missing from the deck. You can also play Snap with special cards designed for another game (such as an Old Maid deck), as long as most of the cards have backs identical to other cards in the deck.

The dealer deals out the whole deck of cards face-down, one card at a time to each player, in a clockwise rotation. It doesn’t matter if some players get more cards than others. What does matter, however, is that you don’t look at the cards you get.

Each player, starting with the player to the left of the dealer, takes a turn flipping over the top card of his pile and putting it face-up in front of him. After a few turns, each player has a little pile of face-up cards.

When you turn over all the cards into the pile in front of you, you pick up the pile and use it again without shuffling the cards.

The flipping process continues until one player turns over a card of the same rank as the top card on another player’s pile. As soon as the matching card is revealed, the first person to call out “Snap!” takes the two piles with matching cards and puts them face down under his own pile.

Frequently, two players make the Snap call simultaneously. In this case, you put the two piles with the same card together, face-up, in middle of the table. Everyone continues to turn over the top cards on their piles until someone turns over a card that matches the card on the pile in the middle of the table. The first person to shout “Snap pool!” wins the middle pile. The new piles that are being created are still up for grabs in the usual way, of course. Whenever a pairing is created, the first to shout “Snap” wins them.

When a player mistakenly calls out “Snap!” her pile goes into the center of the table; the first player to call “Snap pool!” at the relevant moment gets her pile. You have to operate with what you have left, and if you run out of cards, you’re out of the game.

The player who ends up with all the cards wins the game.

For some reason, Snap brings out the worst competitive instincts in people. Establishing several informal rules can avoid Snap-induced bloodshed:

Set rules about the proper way to turn over your card. You can’t turn over the card so you see it first, which means you must flip over the card in a continuous, fast motion onto your pile.
Get an impartial witness to decide on all close calls. If you can, choose someone who isn’t playing the game, preferably an authority figure such as an adult.

A cunning player remembers the order of her pile (or of another player’s pile) when the pile gets small, so she gains a big edge in the calling. Keep an eye on the cards as the game draws to a close; if you don’t, you put yourself at a disadvantage. If you want to avoid this situation, you can agree to shuffle your pile when you’ve worked your way through it.

A variation on Snap, Speed Snap, provides a challenge, which makes it better for older players. All players turn over their cards at the same moment so the reaction process speeds up. To make sure all the players turn over their cards simultaneously, the umpire (or one of the players) must say “One, two, three!” with all players turning over the cards on three.

Animals

Animals is a much louder version of Snap. To understand the basics of Animals, see the preceding section, “Snap.” The major difference between Snap and Animals is the way you call out for the cards.

Make sure you have the following items to play Animals:

Two or more players
A standard deck of 52 cards
Pencils and scraps of paper

At the start of the game, each player selects an animal, preferably one with a long and complicated name, such as duck-billed platypus or Tyrannosaurus Rex. Each player writes the name on a piece of paper and puts it in the middle of the table.

You shuffle the papers around, and every player takes one and then announces the name of the animal. Play can then begin.

When two players turn up matching cards, those players are the only ones who can win the cards. They must each try to call out the other person’s animal name first, and whoever succeeds wins both piles.

If you call out a name at the wrong moment, you concede all your played cards to the player with the animal you call out. Making the wrong call or naming the wrong animal at the appropriate moment costs you nothing but loss because the other player is likely to beat you to the punch.

Slapjack

Slapjack involves physical agility rather than verbal dexterity and memory, so make sure the players involved are active and eager. Young children can play this game if they can tell the difference between a jack and a king or queen.

Assemble the following items to play Slapjack:

Two or more players. A maximum of six is probably sensible or too many collisions may result at home plate.
A standard deck of 52 cards: Slapjack can totally wreck a deck of cards, so don’t break out the collector cards you bought in Las Vegas.

The dealer deals out the entire deck, face-down and one card at a time, to each player in a clockwise rotation. At the end of the deal, each player should have a neat stack of cards in front of him. Make sure you don’t look at your cards.

Beginning on the dealer’s left, each player takes a turn playing a card face-up onto a single stack in the center of the table.

Play continues peacefully until someone plays a jack. Whoever slaps the jack first wins all the cards in the middle of the table and adds them to the bottom of the pile in front of her. The player to the slapper’s left starts the next pile by placing a card face-up in the center of the table.

Spirits run high in Slapjack, so you may need to define some rules before the game starts:

You turn over a card by turning it away from you so you can’t peek at it in advance. (This puts the turner at a slight disadvantage, but the luck evens out things eventually.)
Rest your slapping hand on the table. Make the player who puts out the card slap with her other hand, which must also rest on the table.
When you can’t decide who slapped first, the hand closest to the jack always wins the day.

If you slap the wrong card, you must give a card from your face-down pile to the person who played the card you slapped.

After all your cards are gone, you aren’t automatically out of the game; you stay in for one more chance, lying in ambush and waiting to slap the next jack that gets turned over. At that point, if you fail to slap the jack, you’re out. The first player to get all the cards wins.

Declaring War

War is a great game for young children. The object is to acquire all the cards, which you can do in different ways.

To play War, you need the following:

Two players
A standard deck of 52 cards

Start by dealing out the deck one card at a time, face-down, so each player gets 26 cards. Keep your cards in a pile and don’t look at them. Each player turns over one card simultaneously; whoever turns over the highest card picks up the two cards and puts them face-down at the bottom of his pile.

The cards have the normal rank from highest to lowest: ace, king, queen, jack, and then 10 through 2 (see Book 1, Chapter 1 for card-playing basics).

The game continues in this manner until both players turn over a card of the same rank, at which point you enter a war. A war can progress in one of three ways. We start with the most benevolent version and work up to the most brutal:

Each player puts a card face-down on top of the tied card and then one face-up. Whoever has the higher face-up card takes all six cards.
Each player puts three face-down cards on the table and one face-up card, so the competition is for ten cards. This option speeds up the game, which often drags a little — especially for children!
Each player puts down cards depending on the rank of the tied cards. If the equal cards are 7s, you each count off seven face-down cards before turning a card over. If the equal cards are kings, queens, or jacks, you turn down ten cards before flipping one up and squaring off. For an ace, count out 11 face-down cards.
If another tie results, repeat the process until someone achieves a decisive victory.

If a player runs out of cards in the middle of a war, you have two possible solutions: You lose the war and are out of the game, or you turn your last card face up, and these count as your played card in the war.

Whoever wins the cards gathers them up and puts them at the bottom of her pile. The first person to get all the other player’s cards wins.

You can play War with three players. The dealer gives out 17 cards to each player, face-down. The remaining card goes to the winner of the first war. The players simultaneously flip over one card each. The highest card of the three takes all three cards. If two players tie for the high card, they each place three cards face-down and then place one face-up, and the highest card collects all the cards in the pile. If you have another draw at this point, you fight another war. If all three players turn over the same card, a double war takes place; each player turns down six cards and flips one up, and the winner takes all.

Playing Fish and Friends

The Fish family features Go Fish and Authors. Both games have the same aim: Each player tries to make as many complete sets of four of a kind as possible.

Go Fish

Get out yer fishin’ pole and head to the waterin’ hole — you’re about to go fishin’ fer sets (four cards of the same kind).

To play Go Fish, you need the following:

At least three players
A standard deck of 52 cards

Each player gets ten cards from the dealer. You pretend as you deal out the full deck that you have one more player than you really do. With four players, for example, you deal out ten cards (one by one, face-down, in a clockwise rotation) in five piles. Add the two leftover cards to the pretend pile and leave those 12 cards as the stock in the middle of the table. With three players, you have three hands of 13 cards and a stock of the remaining 13.

Everyone picks up the cards they’ve been dealt. Starting with the player to the left of the dealer, each player asks any other player at the table a question. This must be in the form of “Do you have any Xs?” (X is the rank of card; 4s or queens, for example.) The player asking the question must have at least one X to pose the question.

If the person asked has an X or two, she must hand them over, and the questioner’s turn continues. The questioner can then ask the same player or any other player if he has a card in a particular set. As soon as the questioner completes a set of four cards, she puts the set down on the table in front of her and continues her turn.

If the person asked has no cards of the rank specified in the question, he replies “Go Fish,” and the questioner takes a card from the stock. The questioner’s go ends, whether she picks up the card she was looking for or not. If the card that she draws from the stock completes a set, she must wait until her next turn to put the set down on the table. The turn passes to the player who sends his rival fishing.

Some play a variation that if the card you draw from the stock completes any set in your hand, or if you pick up the card you were unsuccessfully asking for, your turn continues.

At the end of the game — which almost always occurs when all the cards are in everybody’s hands and the stock has been used up — you count the sets. The player who collects the most sets wins. However, if one player puts all her cards into sets before the stock gets used up, she wins.

Authors

Authors resembles Go Fish in many ways, with a few interesting exceptions that make it a far more subtle game.

At one time, people played Authors with special decks of cards bearing the pictures of famous authors. These decks are coming back into fashion; try www.thehouseofcards.com/kids/authors.html.

The big difference between Authors and Go Fish is that the questions you ask other players must relate to specific cards rather than to a type of card. For example, you ask, “Do you have the ♠7?” instead of asking for 7s in general.

The other rules on asking questions are also quite specific:

You can’t ask for a card if you already have that card in your hand.
You can’t ask for a card unless you have at least one card of that set in your hand.

If you have two cards of a set in your hand, hearing someone else ask for a third card in the set may pinpoint who has the cards you need. If player A successfully asks player B for the ♦Q, for example, he now has two queens, so you can collect them from him at your next turn if you get the chance.

An unsuccessful question means that the turn passes to the left rather than to the player who was unable to provide a card. Just as in Go Fish, when you complete a set, you place it on the table.

If you ask for a card when you have nothing in that set, if you fail to provide a card when you’re asked for it, or if you fail to put down a set as soon as you can, you must give one set to the player to your left — a pretty severe charge!

When you run out of cards — because other players picked your hand clean or because you’ve made your hand into sets — you’re out, and the game continues without you until all the sets have been completed and no one has any cards left. Whoever has the most sets at the end wins.

When Lying Is Okay: Cheat

Children love Cheat (which is also called I Doubt It) because it gives them the opportunity to develop their deceptive powers in a way that their parents approve of. Most children master the art of lying convincingly and looking guilty when telling the truth very early on.

You need the following to play Cheat:

Three or more players: You can play with up to 12.
A standard deck of 52 cards: You normally play Cheat with a single deck of cards for up to five players. With 6 to 12 players, use two decks.

The object of Cheat is to get rid of all your cards as quickly as possible. To do that, you play your cards face-down, announcing what you put down — but you don’t have to tell the truth.

The dealer deals out all the cards one at a time, face-down and clockwise, and the players pick up and look at their cards. The player to the left of the dealer is first to play.

The first player puts down cards onto a central pile on the table, squaring the cards up so other players can’t see precisely how many cards he put down. He then makes an announcement about his play, along the lines of “three 6s.” The first player must start with aces.

The player’s statement about what he has played can be false in more than one way. He may put down more or fewer cards than he claims, or he may put down cards unrelated to what he claims. The players who follow put their cards on top of his.

To make a challenge (anyone can do so), someone calls out “Cheat,” and the player accused has two options:

He can concede (gracefully or otherwise) by picking up the entire pile.
He can turn over the cards he just put down to demonstrate that he was telling the truth, in which case the challenger must pick up the whole pile.

The player who picks up the pile from the center gets to start the next round with whatever number he wants.

If you have a dispute over who called out “Cheat” first, the player nearest to the left of the accused has priority.

If no one has called “Cheat,” then the next player has to pick up from the last set put down. He has three choices as to what to play:

He can claim to be playing the same rank as the previous player: If the first player claims to lay three 6s, the next player can take this choice by putting down a number of 6s.
He can claim to be playing cards of one rank higher: If the first claims to put down 6s, “cards of one rank higher” means as many 7s as he wants.
He can claim to be playing cards of one rank lower than the previous move: If the first player claims 6s, any number of 5s works for the next player.

The second player can’t pass. He puts his cards face-down on the table, on top of the previous play. Of course, he may be lying!

The next player has exactly the same set of options (play the same rank as the previous player or one higher or one lower), and play continues until someone makes a challenge.

The winner of the game is the person who succeeds in playing all his cards first. A player can go out by withstanding a challenge on his final turn or by going unchallenged before the next player makes a play. In practice, someone always challenges a player going out, but if you can conceal that you have no cards left on your last play (not easy to do!), you may avoid a challenge.

Steering Clear of the Old Maid

Old Maid allows you to keep card strategy and psychology simple, making it an ideal game for younger children.

All you need to play Old Maid is the following:

At least three players: There is no real upper limit, if you have enough decks of cards.
One or more standard decks of 52 cards, with three queens removed: Use a single deck of cards for up to six players. For seven or more players, use two decks, but take care that the decks have the same markings. You can play the game with special commercial decks, too, with animal faces on the cards and just one Donkey in the deck. You can also play with a special Old Maid deck, with one ugly Old Maid card.

The object of Old Maid is to get rid of all the cards in your hand without being left with the one unmatched card, the solitary queen, or Old Maid.

The dealer deals out all the cards, one by one and face-down in a clockwise rotation. You start by removing every pair of cards that you have (a pair can be two 5s or two kings, for example). You set these cards aside face-up on the table so everyone can see how many pairs you have.

Take care not to remove any three of a kind — only remove pairs from your hand.

After the removal of pairs, the player to the left of the dealer fans out her cards face-down on the table, and the player to her left takes one card. The player who’s offered the cards must take one of them, and then he looks at it to see whether it forms a pair with another card in his hand. If it does, he discards the pair onto the tabletop.

Whether the card he draws forms a pair or not, the second player spreads his cards face-down and offers his hand to the player on his left, who must then choose a card.

The game continues with players dropping out as they get rid of all their cards. Eventually, one player gets left with the lone queen, and other players torment him with taunts of “Old Maid!” until a new hand starts.

You can use a certain element of psychology or reverse psychology to persuade people to take the lone queen away from you. If you arrange your cards with some paired up and more prominently positioned than others, the next player may think that you want to pass off the prominent cards. Make sure the prominent cards are “safe” ones, so you increase the chance that the player takes one of the other cards — perhaps the queen.

Trying Some Children’s Games