How to Play Crazy Eights: Rules, Scoring and a Worked Example

Shuffle one standard 52-card deck with the jokers taken out. How many cards each player gets depends on how many are playing:

Turn the next card face up to start the discard pile: this is the starter. The rest of the deck goes face down as the stock. If the starter happens to be an 8, the dealer is treated as having played it and names the suit to follow.

The player to the left of the dealer goes first, and play continues clockwise. On your turn:

1. Look at the top card of the discard pile, and at the suit named if that card is an 8.
2. Play one card of the same suit or the same rank on top of it, or play an 8.
3. If you play an 8, name a suit: clubs, diamonds, hearts or spades.
4. If you cannot play, or would rather keep your cards, draw 1 card from the stock instead.
5. The turn then passes to the next player on the left.

An 8 is wild: it goes on any card, whatever its suit or rank. Whoever plays it names a suit, and the next player must play a card of that suit or another 8. The suit printed on the 8 itself stops mattering the moment it lands.

Because an 8 always fits, it is the safest card in your hand and the most expensive one to be caught holding: 50 penalty points, as much as 5 kings put together. Most players keep their eights until nothing else will go, which works beautifully right up until someone else goes out first.

This guide follows Pagat’s basic drawing rule: a turn is either one card played or 1 card drawn. If the card you draw fits, you may play it straight away; if not, your turn is over. You may also draw while holding a card you could play, which is handy when the only thing that fits is an 8 you would rather save.

When the stock runs out, keep the top card of the discard pile and shuffle the rest into a new stock. If nothing is left to shuffle, a player who cannot play passes, and if every player passes in a row the hand is blocked: everybody scores the cards in their hand.

A hand ends the moment a player plays their last card. The other players count the cards left in their hands as penalty points:

Pagat’s basic rules leave the finish line to the players. On this site the game ends after the hand in which anyone reaches 100 points, and the lowest total wins: as in golf, the small number is the one you want.

With 2 players each gets 7 cards and 37 stay in the stock, so drawing is cheaper and hands run longer. The game also becomes a matter of reading one person. Every draw is a clue: an opponent who draws right after hearts were named probably has no hearts.

Against a single opponent, an 8 is best spent switching to a suit the other player has shown they lack, which usually sends them back to the stock. Count the 4 eights as they fall: once 3 have been played, whoever holds the last one holds the only wild card left.

Three players, Ana, Ben and you, with the 6♣ as the starter. Ana plays the 6♦ (same rank) and Ben plays the K♦ (same suit). You hold Q♠, 3♥, 8♣ and 9♥. Nothing matches diamonds or kings, so you play the 8♣ and name hearts, the suit you hold most of.

Ana has no heart and no 8, so she draws 1 card: the 2♠, which does not fit, and the turn passes. Ben plays the 5♥ and you follow with the 9♥.

A few turns later you play your last card. Ana is left with 7♣, 4♣ and 2♠: 7 + 4 + 2 = 13 penalty points. Ben is caught with 8♦ and J♥: 50 + 10 = 60, most of it for an eight he never got to play. You take nothing.

Crazy Eights practically begs to be tinkered with: the card-game historian John McLeod calls it “one of the easiest games to modify by adding variations”. Pagat lists several popular extras. They push the game towards Uno, and any of them is fine if everyone agrees before the deal:

• Draw until you can play, instead of 1 card a turn.
• Draw up to a fixed number of cards, then pass if none of them fits.
• A 2 makes the next player draw 2 cards unless they also play a 2, and the penalty stacks.
• A queen skips the next player; with 2 players, you play again.
• An ace reverses the direction of play.
• A player down to 1 card must announce it or draw 2 cards as a penalty.

The tables on this site play the basic game: only eights are special, and you draw 1 card a turn.

Crazy Eights belongs to the shedding family, where the first player to get rid of every card wins. It first appeared as plain Eights in the 1930s and picked up the “Crazy” in the 1940s, a name traced to Section 8, the US military discharge for soldiers judged mentally unfit for service. Its close relatives play the same way with a few extra power cards:

• Mau-Mau, the German member of the family.
• Switch, the British version, and Last Card, both variants of the basic game.
• Uno, a commercial game with its own deck built on the same idea.

If you like the matching, try Old Maid, where you pair cards and avoid the last odd one, or Rummy, where you build sets and runs to empty your hand. Both can be played on this site.