How to play Crazy Eights

Crazy Eights is a shedding game for a standard 52-card deck. It is one of the oldest and most widely played card games in the world, and the ancestor of the commercial games played with special coloured decks. Here you play against three computer opponents.

The deal

Each player is dealt seven cards. The rest of the deck is placed face down as the draw pile, and the top card is turned face up to start the discard pile. If that first card is an eight, it is shuffled back into the deck and another card is turned, so nobody starts the round with a wild already played. An action card turned at the start has no effect, because nobody played it.

Playing a card

On your turn you play one card from your hand onto the discard pile. It must match the top card in suit or in rank: on the seven of hearts you may play any heart, or any seven. If the card you play is not an eight, its suit becomes the suit to match.

Eights are wild. You can play an eight on any card at all, and when you do you name the suit the next player must match. The next card can also be another eight, because it matches by rank.

Drawing

If you cannot play, or would rather keep your cards, you draw one card from the pile. If the card you drew can be played, you may play it straight away or keep it; either way your turn then ends. If it cannot be played, your turn ends immediately. When the draw pile runs out, the discard pile apart from its top card is shuffled to form a new one.

In the rare case that the draw pile and discard pile are both exhausted and nobody can play, the round is blocked and the player with the lowest-value hand takes it.

Action cards

Most home games give three ranks extra powers, and this version does too unless you switch the actions off.

A two makes the next player draw two cards and lose their turn. They can avoid it by playing a two of their own, any suit, which adds two more to the total and passes it on to the player after them. A chain of twos ends with somebody drawing the whole stack. While twos are being stacked, nothing but a two may be played; not even an eight.

A queen skips the next player, and an ace reverses the direction of play.

Last card

When any player is down to one card, the table says so with a Last card! tag on that player. It is a warning rather than a rule: you never lose cards for forgetting to call it.

Scoring and winning the match

The first player to empty their hand wins the round and scores the value of every card left in the other three hands. Eights are worth fifty, kings, queens and jacks ten, aces one, and every other card its number. The first player to reach one hundred points wins the match.

Strategy in brief

The biggest single skill is patience with eights. An eight played early to escape a bad turn is gone when the round gets tight, while an eight held to the end lets you go out on any card. Measured against our own computer players, holding eights is most of the difference between the strongest and the middle difficulty.

After that, play to your longest suit so you keep having moves, notice when a player draws because they cannot follow a suit, and switch to that suit when they are next. Save your twos and queens for the player who is down to one or two cards.