Reglur Old Maid
Old Maid is one of the simplest card games there is, and one of the first games many of us learn as kids. There is no strategy to worry about and no scoring to keep track of: you pair up your cards, take turns picking cards from each other, and whoever ends up holding the last queen is the Old Maid. There are many small variations of the game around the world, the rules below describe how it is played here.
Objective
Get rid of all your cards by pairing them up, and don't be the one left holding the Old Maid. There is no single winner in Old Maid, there is only a single loser: the player who is stuck with the Old Maid at the end. Everybody else wins.
Players and cards
Old Maid can be played by 2, 3 or 4 players. The game uses a standard 52 card deck with one queen removed, the queen of clubs, so 51 cards are in play. That leaves three queens in the deck. Two of them will pair up during the game, the third one can never be paired. She is the Old Maid.
Dealing
The whole deck is dealt out, one card at a time, until there are no cards left. Some players may get one card more than the others, that doesn't matter. The dealer changes after every game.
Pairs
A pair is two cards of the same rank, for example two sevens or two kings. The suits don't matter, the seven of hearts and the seven of clubs make a perfectly good pair. As soon as the cards have been dealt, every player looks at their hand and puts all their pairs face up on the table. If you happen to hold three cards of the same rank you put down one pair and keep the third card. The pairs are shown to everybody, so there is no cheating with the queens!
Taking turns
The player to the left of the dealer goes first. On your turn you take one card from the hand of the player on your left. You can't see their cards, so just pick one, any one. If the card you took makes a pair with a card already in your hand, the pair goes on the table right away. If not, the card simply stays in your hand. Either way your turn is over.
Then it is the next player's turn, the one you just took a card from, and they take a card from the player on their left. Play continues around the table like this until the game is over.
Being safe
When a player has no cards left in their hand they are safe, they can't end up with the Old Maid anymore and they simply sit out the rest of the game. When it would be their turn, play skips to the next player who still has cards, and when someone would take a card from them, they take a card from the next player with cards instead.
The Old Maid
Because one queen was removed from the deck there will always be one card left over that can never be paired. When all the other cards have been paired up and put on the table, one player is left holding a single queen: the Old Maid. That player loses, and everybody else wins. Then it is time to shuffle up and play again!
Tips
There honestly isn't much strategy in Old Maid, which is exactly why it's a great game for kids and for playing with people who have never played cards before. Where you place the queen in your hand doesn't help you here, the player picking from you sees your cards face down and in random order. Just enjoy the ride, and try not to look too worried when you draw a queen.
Playing with friends
You can play Old Maid against the computer, or against other people online. Click the Multiplayer button to open the lobby, where you can join a public table with 2 to 4 players, or create a private table for just you and your friends. When you create a private table you get a code that you give to your friends, and they can use the code to join your table.
Variations
Some people play that pairs must also match in color, so a red seven only pairs with the other red seven. Others use a joker as the Old Maid instead of removing a queen, and in some countries the odd card is a jack, which is where the German name of the game, Schwarzer Peter, comes from. The version here is the most common one: remove one queen and pair by rank only.
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Um Old Maid
This online version of Old Maid was made by us here at SimpleGames.io. It is the first card game on the site, and we picked it because it is a game almost everyone has played at some point, usually at the kitchen table with a deck that was missing a card anyway. It is quick to learn, quick to play and it works just as well for a five year old as for a grown-up who wants a two minute break.
We wanted this version to feel like the real thing, so the cards you can pick from light up when it is your turn, the computer players hesitate over your cards before they pick one, and every pair is shown to the table before it goes on the pile, just like it should be. You can play against the computer with 2, 3 or 4 players, or against your friends and other people online.
The game is made using html+JavaScript+css with jQuery used for the animations. All the graphics used for the game we found at OpenClipArt, a great site with free graphics. The excellent playing card images were made by Nicu Buculei, and the player images were made by Gerald G.
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