Idiot Card Game Rules

Idiot is a shedding game for two to five players. Everything anyone plays goes onto a single pile in the middle of the table, and the card on top sets the bar. You either match it, beat it, or take the whole pile into your hand.

Each player also has six cards on the table, three lying face down with three face up on top of them. Those are the last cards you get to play, and the bottom three you play blind. The first player to clear hand and table is safe. Whoever is still holding cards after everyone else has finished is the idiot.

One standard 52-card deck. Take the jokers out.

• Two to five players, best with three or four
• Room in front of each player for six cards in two layers

Nothing is scored, so there is nothing to write down. One game gives you a winner and an idiot, and then you shuffle and deal again.

The ace is the highest card and the three is the lowest. Suit never matters, only the value.

The order runs 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, jack, queen, king, ace. Twos and tens are missing from that list on purpose. Both of them can be played on top of anything, whatever the pile is showing.

Pick a dealer for the first game, then pass the deal to the left. Every player gets nine cards, dealt in three passes:

1. Three cards face down, side by side in front of the player.
2. Three cards face up, one covering each of the first three.
3. Three cards as a hand.

What is left of the deck goes face down in the middle. That is the stock.

Now pick up your hand. You may trade as many hand cards as you like with your own face-up table cards, and it pays to move the high ones onto the table and keep the cheap ones in hand. The three cards underneath stay as they were dealt. You never get to look at them, not before the game and not during it.

Whoever holds the lowest card leads, and play carries on clockwise.

On your turn you add one card to the pile, or several cards of the same rank at once. It has to be at least as high as the card on top. When the pile is empty you may play anything.

Say a 9 is showing. Another 9 is enough, a queen works too, and if you hold three queens you can put all three down in the same turn.

While there are cards in the stock you draw back up to three in hand once you have played. If you already hold more than three because you picked up the pile, you draw nothing. So nobody empties their hand until the stock has run out, and the table cards stay locked until then.

With no legal card you take the pile. All of it goes into your hand, you play nothing that turn, and the next player starts a fresh pile with any card they like. The same choice is open to you when you could play but would rather hold back.

You can also chance it. Instead of playing from your hand, turn over the top card of the stock. If it plays, it plays, and you spent none of your own cards. If it does not, that card and the whole pile go into your hand.

Chancing on a small pile is cheap. Try it when the pile is twenty cards deep and you will see how people end up as the idiot.

A two can be played on anything, and the player after you is then free to play whatever they want. The pile stays on the table, but the bar it set is gone. Put a 2 on an ace and the next player can answer with a 3.

A ten can also be played on anything, and it burns the pile. Every card in it is pushed aside and out of the game for good. You then lead again into the empty space with any card you choose.

Four cards of the same rank on top of the pile burn it the same way. Play all four yourself, or let the fourth come from another player matching what was already there. Whoever laid that fourth card leads again.

A burn hands you two turns in a row, so one well-timed ten can take three or four cards out of your hand while the rest of the table watches.

Once the stock is gone there is nothing left to draw, and hands only get smaller.

If your hand is empty when your turn comes round, you play one of your three face-up table cards instead. Take whichever you want. The rule has not changed. Match or beat the top card, or pick up the pile.

Pick up the pile at that point and you are back on hand cards until you have emptied them again. The table has to wait.

With the face-up cards gone you reach for the hidden three. Choose one without turning it over, flip it straight onto the pile, and see what you got. High enough and it is gone. Too low and you take it back along with the pile.

Four players, and the pile is empty. Anna opens with two 5s from her hand, then draws two cards to bring her hand back to three.

Ben could beat a 5, but he would rather not spend the cards on it. He drops a two instead, which leaves Clara free to play anything.

Clara plays a 4 and Dan matches it with another. Anna is holding the last two 4s, puts both down, and that is four of a kind on top of the pile. It burns, and Anna leads again with a 3 she would otherwise have been stuck with.

These rules follow the version played around the Nordics: 52 cards without jokers, three cards in hand, three face-up and three hidden table cards, ace high and three low. Tens and four of a kind burn the pile, and the player who burned it leads again. Nothing is scored. Elsewhere the same game goes by Shithead, Palace and Karma.