Fan Tan Card Game Rules

Fan Tan is a shedding game for three to eight players, and the whole deck is dealt out. Empty your hand before anyone else and you win the round.

Four rows grow on the table as you play, one for each suit. Every row starts with the seven of that suit and runs outwards, down towards the ace and up towards the king. You add one card on your turn, and when nothing in your hand fits, you pass and pick up a penalty point.

The same game goes by Sevens, Parliament and Card Dominoes, depending on where you learned it.

One standard 52-card deck with the jokers taken out.

• Three to eight players, best with four to six
• Pen and paper for the penalty points
• Table space for four rows of thirteen cards

To play for stakes instead, put the paper away and bring out chips, matches or coins. A game runs over several rounds, so settle on a number before the first deal.

Rank tells you where a card belongs in a row, and suit tells you which row it goes in. The king is the top end and the ace is the bottom.

A finished row reads ace, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, jack, queen, king. The seven sits in the middle with the six and the eight next to it. With ♠️7 alone on the table, ♠️6 and ♠️8 are the only spades anyone can play.

Cards at the ends of a row are the awkward ones. An ace has to wait for every card from the seven down to the 2 before it can go anywhere.

Draw for the first deal, then hand it to the left after every round.

The dealer gives out the entire deck, one card at a time, clockwise. If the cards do not divide evenly, some players end up one card short. That changes nothing, and it evens out as the deal moves round the table. In the chip version, whoever got fewer cards antes one extra chip.

Sort your hand by suit and rank before the first card goes down. The gaps are the interesting part, because they show which cards you need somebody else to unlock.

Whoever holds ♦️7 opens the round and puts it in the middle of the table. Nothing else is legal on an empty table, and that opening card is why Norwegian players call the game Ruter 7, the seven of diamonds.

Play carries on clockwise from whoever opened. One card per turn, and only two plays are legal:

• Any seven, which starts the row for its suit
• The card directly above or below one already in a row, in the same suit

With ♥️7 and ♥️8 out, you can add ♥️6 or ♥️9. Holding both gets you nowhere faster, since a turn is one card.

Everything stays face up, and the rows slide outwards as they grow, so the whole table can see what has gone and what is still missing.

No legal card means you pass. The round ends the moment somebody puts down their last card.

Nothing to play means a pass, and a pass is one penalty point against you. The turn moves straight on to the next player.

Passing is not a choice you get to make. If a card in your hand fits, you have to play it. When several fit, you pick freely, and that choice is most of the game.

Anyone caught passing with a playable card pays three chips into the pot. If the card was a seven, five more chips go to the two players holding the six and the eight of that suit, since they were the only ones waiting for it.

Scoring on paper, you need to settle the equivalent before you start. Three penalty points works.

As soon as one player is out of cards, the round is over. Everyone else counts what is left in hand and takes one penalty point per card, on top of what their passes already cost them.

Say the other three are left holding 2, 5 and 9 cards after one pass each. They write down 3, 6 and 10. The winner of the round writes 0.

Then shuffle, deal again and keep adding to the totals. After the agreed number of rounds, the lowest total wins. For a single round there is nothing to add up: first hand empty takes it.

Four players at the table, and Anna has ♦️7, so she leads.

Ben puts ♦️8 above it. Clara has no diamond that fits, but she does hold ♣️7, so she starts the club row with that.

Dan is sitting on ♦️4, ♥️10 and a couple of picture cards. None of it is legal, because ♦️5 and ♦️6 are still missing and nobody has opened hearts or spades. He passes and writes down a point.

Anna plays ♦️9 and Ben plays ♦️6. ♦️5 is legal now, so Dan is back in the game the moment someone puts it down. The rows keep stretching until one hand is empty.

These rules use 52 cards without jokers, the king at the top of each row and the ace at the bottom, and ♦️7 as the opening card. A pass costs one penalty point, and the round ends when the first hand is empty. Sources disagree on two points: some let the player to the dealer's left open with any seven, and some place the ace above the king. Both are listed under the variants.