The Best Card Games for the Holidays

With the lull of this period between Christmas and New Year, you may find yourself getting a bit restless. A great way to take your boredom away is card games! There’s no better way to give your mind a bit of a workout, and a rest from watching TV, than playing a game of cards. It’s also a great way to get the whole family to sit back down together before the chaos of the new year! Plus, December 28th is National Card Playing Day – so it would be rude not to!

Listed below are a selection of fun card games, suitable for the whole family to enjoy!

Spoons

Get to the cutlery drawer and grab spoons for this game! You’ll need enough spoons for the whole group, minus one. Arrange the spoons in a small circle on the table and deal four cards each. Each player, looking at their cards, discards a card to the player next to them. With the first player picking a card from the deck, and the last discarding their card into a trash pile. This picking and discarding of cards keeps going until someone gets four of a kind. Then, that person can grab a spoon. Once the first spoon is picked, it’s a race to grab a spoon, and the person without one loses that game.

Fan Tan

For this game, all the cards are dealt out. The player to the left of the dealer begins, and when it is your turn you must lay a card if you have one that you can play. If not, you must pass go. You will end up with a row laid out for each suit. If someone lays a 7, then a new row can be started. If you don’t have a 7, you lay a card that is one higher or lower than those already laid. The cards must be placed in numerical order. When a player has laid all their cards, they are the winner!

Crazy Eights

The objective of this game is to get rid of all your cards. This game can be played with at least 2 players. Each player gets 5 cards, and must put a card on the pile which matches the suit or number on the card below. However, if you have an eight in any suit, you can put it down regardless of the suit or number beneath it, and that player can specify the suit that will need to go on top!

Cheat

This game is great for those with a mischievous streak! A big part of this game is not telling the whole truth. The aim of this game is to get rid of all your cards. You start with the whole pack dealt out, and each player must lay the card face down that is the next number: first person must lay an ace, second a two, third a three and so on. You can lay multiple cards of the same denomination. The twist is with this one, is that players can lie. Even if you don’t have the denomination you need to lay, you can lay down something else and claim it is the right one. However, if another player correctly suspects you’re lying and yells ‘cheat’, then you must pick up the pile of cards. But, if you were telling the truth, the opposite happens, and the accusing player must pick up the cards on the table.

Old Maid

For this game, you need to remove the jokers and 3 of the queens. At the start of the game, all the cards get dealt out, and everyone must make pairs by number. Then, each player must pick a card from the person next to them, and then have the following person pick a card off of them. The purpose of this game is to get rid of all your cards and not get left with the queen at the end. This game is great for testing your poker face!

You may have known these games by different names depending on where you live, but they’ll be family favorites regardless! But, if you do run out of card games to try with your family, check to see if Qmee has any surveys you can do to earn some extra cash over Christmas! Or you can check out some Qmee recipes!