Cheat Card Game Rules

Cheat is a card game for 3 to 10 players where the winner is the first to get rid of every card. All cards are played face down into a shared pile while the player announces what they are, and nobody can see whether the announcement is true. Good cards help, but a straight face helps more.

Getting exposed costs you the entire pile, so every play gets weighed around the table. Would somebody who just picked up twenty cards really have three queens to spare?

The name depends on where you learned it: Cheat in Britain, Bullshit in the USA, and I Doubt It in many older card game books. In Norway it goes by Bløff.

A game typically takes 10 to 25 minutes and is at its best with four to six players.

• A standard 52-card deck, no jokers
• 3 to 10 players

With seven or more players the hands get short and the lies get easy to count, so shuffle two decks together for a bigger group.

No score is kept, so pen and paper stay in the drawer. Beyond the cards, all the game asks of you is a poker face.

The dealer shuffles and deals the whole deck one card at a time, as evenly as possible. Four players get thirteen cards each. When the deck does not divide evenly, somebody ends up a card ahead, and the game does not care.

Everybody picks up and sorts their hand. Leave room in the middle of the table for the discard pile, which starts empty.

The player to the dealer's left goes first, and turns pass clockwise.

On your turn you put one or more cards face down on the pile and announce the count and the rank out loud: "two aces". The opening play is aces, the second player plays twos, the third threes, and the rank keeps climbing one step per turn. After tens come jacks, queens and kings, and after kings the sequence starts over at aces.

Suits play no part, only ranks. And since every card lands face down, nobody knows whether "two aces" really were two aces. When your turn comes and you hold none of the required rank, you have to play something else and lie. When you do hold them, you can tell the truth, or lie anyway to sneak out a card you want gone.

The count is the one thing that must be true. Announce "three sevens" and exactly three cards go down, whatever they actually are.

There is no passing. Every turn puts at least one card on the pile, which grows until somebody objects.

If you think the last play was a lie, call "cheat". Anyone at the table may call, but only until the next player has played. After that the lie is safe, buried in the pile.

The cards from the challenged play are turned over, and one of two things happens:

• If any of them is not what was announced, the liar picks up the entire pile.
• If the announcement was true, the accuser picks up the pile instead.

Then the game moves on as if nothing happened: the player to the left of the one who was challenged plays the next rank in the sequence.

If two players call at once, the first shout counts. When that is impossible to settle, the caller sitting closest in turn order gets it.

Four players. Amy leads with two cards and says "two aces", truthfully. Ben holds no twos, so he slides ♠️9 onto the pile and announces "one two". Nobody blinks. Clara plays two genuine threes, and Dan says "three fours" while unloading a four, a jack and a ten.

Amy happens to hold two fours herself. Three more would make five, and the deck only has four. She calls "cheat". Dan's cards are flipped, the jack and the ten give him away, and all eight cards on the table move into his hand.

Amy sits to Dan's left, so she carries on with fives, and the sequence rolls on from there.

Playing your last card is not quite winning. The play still has to survive a challenge. If somebody calls "cheat" and your cards hold up, the game is yours. If they catch you, the pile comes back into your hand and the game continues.

That is why final plays are rarely believed. A player down to one card has everything to gain by lying, and the whole table knows it. Expect the call.

There is no scoring. First player out wins, and if the evening is young, shuffle up and deal again.

These rules describe the most common form of Cheat, the game Americans call Bullshit and older books call I Doubt It: the whole deck is dealt, ranks climb from aces and wrap around after kings, the announced count is always true, and a challenge must come before the next player acts. The frequent deviations are listed under variants.