Go Fish Card Game Rules

Go Fish is an asking game for 2 to 5 players, and one of the first card games most children learn. On your turn you ask another player for cards you need, and every wrong guess sends you fishing in the pile on the table. The goal is to collect books, sets of four cards of the same rank, and whoever has the most books when the game ends wins.

This page describes the Nordic way of playing, where everyone starts with seven cards and the leftover deck is spread out to look like a sea. In Norway the game is called Hopp i havet, jump in the sea, after the answer you get when you ask the wrong person.

A game takes 10 to 20 minutes, and children from about six play on equal terms with the grown-ups.

• A standard 52-card deck, no jokers
• 2 to 5 players
• Room on the table to spread the leftover cards out

Nothing is written down during play. Pen and paper only enter the picture if you play several rounds and count books across them.

Everyone draws a card, and the lowest draw deals. The dealer shuffles and gives each player seven cards, one at a time.

The rest of the deck goes face down in the middle of the table. Resist making a tidy stack: push the cards around until they lie in a loose jumble, like waves. That jumble is the sea, and every miss sends someone fishing in it.

The player to the dealer's left starts, and turns move clockwise.

On your turn, pick one opponent and ask for a rank, for example: "Mary, do you have any jacks?" You must hold at least one card of that rank yourself, so asking for jacks means at least one jack sits in your hand.

If Mary has any jacks, she hands over all of them, and your turn carries on. Ask again, the same player or another one, the same rank or a new one, as long as you hold it.

If she has none, she says "Go fish!", and you draw one card from the sea. Draw the very rank you asked for, and you show it to everyone and keep your turn. Draw anything else, and you add it quietly to your hand while the turn passes to the player on your left.

The moment four cards of one rank come together in your hand, you lay them down in front of you. This happens right away, whether it is your turn or not, and no matter how the fourth card arrived.

Those four cards are a book and take no further part in the game. Suits (♠️♦️♣️♥️) mean nothing in Go Fish, only ranks count, and every book is worth the same: four twos and four aces score one book each.

Two things end the game: an empty hand or an empty sea. Whichever comes first, play stops on the spot.

Then everyone counts their books. The most books wins, and a tie is a shared win.

You hold ♠️J ♥️J ♦️4 ♣️9 ♥️2, and you heard Tom ask for jacks earlier in the game, so he holds at least one.

You ask Tom for jacks and get two, ♦️J and ♣️J. That completes the book, and you lay all four jacks down at once. Your turn continues, so you try Tom again, this time for nines. "Go fish!" You draw from the sea, and up comes ♦️9: the rank you asked for, shown to the table, and the turn is still yours.

Draws like that are rare. The questions were the real price: everyone at the table now knows you collect nines.

These rules describe the Nordic form of Go Fish: seven cards to every player, the stock spread out as a sea, and a fresh turn when you fish up the very rank you asked for. The five-card deal common in English descriptions is under variants.