Beggar My Neighbour

Players and equipment

Two players classically — more can play — and a standard 52-card deck. There is not one decision in the whole game, which is why it is the first card game most people learn: it runs itself while small children experience the full stock market. Children can play it from about four, as soon as they can tell a court card from a plain one and count to four.

The deal

The whole deck, face down, into a pile in front of each player. No looking. With two players that is twenty-six each; with three, seventeen each and one card set aside.

Play

In turn, each player flips their top card onto a central pile. Plain cards cost nothing; an honour — an ace or a court card — demands payment from the next player:

Ace

4 cards

The steepest demand

King

3 cards

Next down

Queen

2 cards

Then the queen

Jack

1 card

The cheapest honour

The payer flips the demanded number one at a time onto the pile. If every payment card is plain, the player who demanded takes the whole pile under theirs, and the payer starts the next round. But if an honour turns up mid-payment, the debt reverses: the payment stops and the previous player must now pay for that honour, and so on until a payment completes.

With more than two players the debt passes round the table rather than back: an honour turned during a payment is a demand on the player after the payer, and the pile goes to whoever laid the honour that was finally paid out in full. A player who runs out of cards in the middle of a payment pays what they have and is out, and the pile goes to the demander as it stands.

Scoring

There is no score and, famously, no decision — just the pile, swinging back and forth on the honours. Every card is in one of the stacks or on the table, so the stacks always add up to 52, and the only number in the game is how many each of you holds. What is worth writing down is who won. On SquareScores a game of Beggar My Neighbour is one row on the match table, and one tap on the winner's name records it.

A worked round

Alice and Ben, twenty-six each, and Alice turns first. The right-hand column is what each holds after the line, with whatever is still on the table.

The jack

Ben takes 5: Alice 23, Ben 29

Three plain cards, then Ben's jack; Alice pays one card, an eight

The queen

Alice 22, Ben 27, three on the table

Alice starts the next pile with a queen; Ben pays a two and then a king

The king

Alice 19, Ben 27, six on the table

Alice pays a seven, a ten and an ace

The ace

Alice takes 10: Alice 29, Ben 23

Ben pays four plain cards

The jack is a payment that completes: Alice owes one card, turns an eight, and the five cards on the table are Ben's. Alice starts the next pile, and it is the long kind. Her queen makes Ben owe two; his second card is a king, so his debt is cancelled and Alice owes three; her third card is an ace, so Ben owes four. His four are plain, the payment completes, and the ten cards on the table go under Alice's stack — four of them hers, six of them Ben's. Ben starts the next pile. Every line adds up to 52.

Ending

Run out of cards and you are out; the player who gathers the whole deck wins. With two players it can take four minutes or forty, and nobody has ever been able to say which in advance.

There is none

Once the cards are dealt the game is decided, and the only thing left is to find out how. You never choose a card: you turn the top one, and the top one is what it is. Nobody has ever been better at Beggar My Neighbour than anybody else, and that is why it is the right first game for a small child, who can beat a grandparent at it on equal terms.

What you can choose

The rules, before the first card. How many cards each honour demands, whether the game runs to the whole pack or to the clock, and what happens to a player who runs out in the middle of a payment. Those three choices decide how long the game takes far more than anything that happens in it, so make them out loud while the pack is being dealt, and stick to them.

What a court card usually does

Sixteen of the fifty-two cards are honours, so about one card in three turned from a shuffled pack is one. A payment of one card, for a jack, is interrupted about one time in three, so a jack settles its pile about two times in three. A payment of four, for an ace, is interrupted nearly four times in five. So the dearest card is the one that most often passes the debt on rather than settling it, and the long chains that make the game swing nearly all start with an ace or a king. None of it changes what you do, because you do nothing; it tells you what to expect when the ace lands.

Watching the count

The count is the whole drama. Twenty-six each at the start, then thirty and twenty-two, then nineteen and thirty-three; a child who counts both stacks after every pile is doing arithmetic without noticing, and can see the game turning long before it ends. The big piles come at the end of a chain — a queen answered by a king answered by an ace — and those are the moments to watch for.

What is worth recording

Nothing about the cards. What is worth keeping is who won, and how many times, over as many games as the pack lasts: six games at three each is a tie nobody can argue with, and a child who has lost four in a row is owed the record when the fifth goes their way.

Strip Jack Naked

The same game under its older name, still used in parts of Britain, along with Beat Your Neighbour Out of Doors. Nothing in the play differs; the name is the whole variation.

The size of the payments

Four for an ace, three for a king, two for a queen and one for a jack is what nearly every table plays, and those are the numbers to say aloud before the first card. Where a family differs it is usually the ace that moves: in some houses it is not an honour at all, and only the three court cards demand. Bigger payments make a chain more likely and the piles larger; smaller ones settle the pile more often and swing it less.

Three or more players

The same game with the debt passing round the table. An honour turned during a payment is a demand on the player after the payer, not back on the demander, and the pile goes to whoever laid the honour that was finally paid out. A player who runs out is out and the others carry on, so a game of four narrows to two and then finishes as the two-handed game does.

Playing to a time limit

Agree how long the game will last, and when the time is up each player counts their stack: the most cards wins. It is the only certain way of ending a game whose length nobody can predict, and it changes nothing about the play. Ten minutes is about right for young children.

War

The other children's game of the family, and a different game: each player turns a card at once onto their own pile and the higher card takes both, with a war on a tie. It has no payments and no central pile, and it has a page of its own here.

How do you play Beggar My Neighbour?

Deal the pack face down between the players. In turn, each turns their top card onto a central pile. When an ace or a court card is turned, the next player pays: four cards for an ace, three for a king, two for a queen, one for a jack, turned one at a time onto the pile. If the payment is all plain cards, the player who turned the honour takes the pile. If an honour turns up in the payment, the payment stops and the other player must pay for it instead. The player who ends up with the whole pack wins.

What happens if a court card comes up while you are paying?

Your payment stops at once, whatever you still owed, and the debt reverses: the player who made you pay now has to pay for the card you turned. The chain carries on until somebody's payment is made up entirely of plain cards, and the player who laid the last honour takes everything on the table.

Who starts after the pile is taken?

The player who paid — the one whose plain cards completed the payment — turns the first card of the next pile. The player who took the pile puts it face down under their own stack without looking at it.

Does a game of Beggar My Neighbour always end?

Almost always, in anything from a few minutes to the best part of an hour. Whether a deal could go on for ever kept mathematicians busy for decades, and an arrangement of the pack that never ends has since been found, but no ordinary shuffle has ever produced one. If a game is dragging, set a time limit and count the stacks when it runs out.

Is there any skill in Beggar My Neighbour?

None at all. Nobody chooses a card, so nobody can play well or badly, and the result was decided the moment the pack was dealt. That is the point: a four-year-old can beat anyone at it, and the game runs itself while the grown-ups talk. The only choices are the rules, made before the first card.

Can more than two people play?

Yes. Deal the pack as evenly as it goes and play round the table; an honour turned during a payment passes the debt to the next player rather than back to the demander. A player with no cards left is out, and the last player holding cards wins.

Why is it called Beggar My Neighbour?

Because that is what the pile does: a player who pays out four cards and then loses the whole pile has been left with nothing by the person beside them. The older English name, Strip Jack Naked, says the same thing, and Beat Your Neighbour Out of Doors is the same game again.