Play The Golf Card Game

Play The Golf Card Game

If the winter weather is getting to you, try playing a game of golf.

As in Golf, the Card Game.

“Golf” is the name of a family of card games where players try to score the fewest number of points, mirroring golf’s goal of fewest strokes. The game also is typically played over nine deals (holes).

This particular golf game is not the same as the solitaire game known as golf.

There are a large number of variants of the game, all of which use one or more standard decks of playing cards.

In general, players are dealt cards, which are placed face down in a grid in front of them. The grid could be 3×2 for a six-card game or 3×3 for a nine-card game. Two of the cards in each players’ grids are turned face up.

The left over cards form the draw deck. Initially, the first card in the draw deck is turned over to begin a discard pile.

On their turn players choose to draw the top card from the discard or from the draw deck. The chosen card replaces one of the player’s face down or face up cards; the card replaced goes face up to the discard. It is then the next player’s turn, who choses from the draw or discard and so forth.

If the draw deck runs out, reshuffle the discard and turn the top card over to form a new discard pile.

A round ends when all of one player’s cards are face up. The remaining players then get one more turn.

All remaining face down cards are then turned up.

To score, first eliminate horizontally or vertically adjacent pairs. A single card can be used to anchor multiple horizontal and vertical pairs. The cards that remain are scored as follows

Numeral cards score face value
Jack and Queens score 10 points each
Kings score zero points
Jokers score -2 points

Play nine rounds, add up the total; low score wins.

There are seemingly dozens of variants of this game. Four, six, eight and nine card variants are common. One variant allows players to turn a card face up instead of drawing.

If you’re playing with more than four players, two decks are recommended.

Here’s a nice video explaining play: