Take a seat.
Pair your cards, take one from the player on your left, and don’t be left with the odd queen.
HAND COMPLETE
Waiting for the host to deal.
FREE ONLINE CARD GAME
Pair them all.
Don’t hold the queen.
Play Old Maid free in your browser with no download, sign-up or ads: two to six players, pairs laid down for you or by hand, and a queen, a joker or a hidden card as the Old Maid. Take a card from your neighbour, pair what you can, shuffle your hand to keep them guessing, and don’t be the one left holding the odd card. Games take a few minutes.
Classic Old Maid · 2–6 seats · 51 cards
Updated
New to Old Maid? Learn the rulesHOW TO PLAY
Two to six players and one deck with the queen of clubs taken out: 51 cards. Three queens are left, and only two of them can pair. The third is the Old Maid.
Deal every card, one at a time. With four players that is 13, 13, 13 and 12; with two, 26 and 25. With the joker added there is one card more: 14, 13, 13 and 13, or 27 and 26.
Try a practice game ↑Two cards of the same rank are a pair. Before anyone takes a card, every pair in every hand goes face up on the table. Three of a kind lays one pair and keeps the third card. The table does this for you, or choose Pair by hand to tap two matching cards and press Pair them.
Your hand
Laid downYou hold the 9 of spades and the 9 of hearts.
On your turn, take one face-down card from the player on your left. You choose it by position, without seeing it. If it matches a card you hold, lay the pair down. Then it is that player’s turn to take from the player on their left.
Your handWren holds four cards, face down. Pick one.
A player with no cards left is safe: they sit out and nobody takes from them. If the player on your left is safe, take from the next player round who still has cards. When the last pair goes down, one card is left in one hand. Whoever holds it is the Old Maid and loses.
The Old MaidEveryone else has run out of cards.
ONE LOSER
There are no points. The player left holding the Old Maid loses the game, and everyone else wins together, whatever order they ran out of cards in.
The scorecard shows who was safe, how many pairs each player laid and the order players ran out. Statistics count your games, the games you stayed safe, the times you were left with the Old Maid and the pairs you made, kept separately for each computer level.
MOSTLY LUCK
You cannot see the cards you take from, so no pick is better than another. Old Maid is a game of luck, which is why young children can beat grown-ups at it.
The one thing you control is the order of your own hand. If you always put a new card at the end, or always keep a queen in the middle, the player on your right can learn where to pick. Press Shuffle my hand after your turn and there is nothing to learn.
The same works the other way. If you always take the first card, a player who notices can leave the queen there for you. Against the Expert computer this matters: in two-player games where you always take the first card, Expert leaves you holding the Old Maid 91% of the time, against 53% for Easy (3,000 simulated games each). With four players the same habit costs much less, about 37% against 31%, because only one player ever takes from you.
Easy never rearranges its hand. Standard shuffles after someone takes from it. Expert shuffles every turn and keeps a queen or joker where its taker has picked most often, even one it has just taken. Against players who pick at random, all three lose about one game in four at a four-player table, which is the same as luck. The levels are there so you can see the difference a habit makes, not because one computer plays better.
QUICK ANSWERS
The one card that has no partner. By default the queen of clubs is taken out of the deck, so one of the three queens left ends up alone. In Options you can add a joker instead, or set aside a hidden random card.
Both are traditional. Taking out a queen keeps an ordinary 52-card deck in the box. Adding a joker makes the Old Maid obvious when you draw it. Choose in Options.
Whoever is left holding the Old Maid loses. Everyone else wins together; there are no points.
Yes. With two players you take turns drawing from each other’s hands. One of you gets 26 cards and the other 25 (27 and 26 with the joker), and every card except the Old Maid pairs at once. Up to six can play.
About two minutes with four players against the computer: around 36 cards change hands, about 10 of them taken by you. Two-player games are over in less than a minute.
Yes. Matching pairs is the whole game, it needs no reading or counting, and luck decides it, so children can win against anyone. Pair by hand lets them find the pairs themselves.
Not yet. This table uses standard playing cards with a queen as the Old Maid. An illustrated deck is planned.
Hardly. The only choices are which card to take and how to arrange your own hand. Higher levels shuffle their hands more, and Expert keeps a queen or joker where you usually pick, which only matters if you always pick the same spot. Against random picks, every level loses about as often as luck says.
Drag a card, or press Arrange, tap a card and tap where it goes. Press Shuffle my hand, or S, to mix your cards. Other players only ever see the backs.
Yes. It runs in your browser with no app, no account and no ads. Your game is saved in this browser, so a reload brings you back to the same turn.
Yes. On your turn press 1 to 9 to take that card from the fan, or Tab to a card and press Enter; the arrow keys move along the fan. S shuffles your hand, P pairs two selected cards when you pair by hand, and H gives a hint.
Go Fish is the other classic children’s card game about pairs and sets, War is the simplest of all, and Crazy Eights is a good next step. Links appear here once those tables are live.
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