Egyptian Ratscrew

Players and equipment

Two to eight players and a standard 52-card deck; shuffle in a second one from about six players, or the hands run out before anybody has warmed up. It is War with reflexes: the pile moves on court cards and on slaps, and the slaps sting.

The deal

The whole deck, dealt round, face down, into a pile in front of each player. Nobody looks at their cards at any point: you play from the top and never choose.

Play

In turn, each player flips their top card onto a central pile, turned away from themselves. Plain cards, two to ten, pass quietly. An honour is an ace or a court card, and an honour starts a challenge — the next player must turn up another honour within a set number of cards:

Ace

4 chances

The steepest demand

King

3 chances

Next down

Queen

2 chances

Then the queen

Jack

1 chance

One flip, no mercy

If they turn one up, the challenge passes on at the new honour's count — a jack answering an ace leaves the next player one chance, not four. If they run through their chances on plain cards, the player who laid the honour takes the whole pile, puts it face down under their own, and starts the next pile with a card of their own.

The other route to the pile is the slap. Anybody, in turn or not, may slap:

Double

Slap it

Two of a rank in a row

Sandwich

Slap it

Two of a rank around one other card

First hand on the pile takes it, and a slap beats a challenge: a jack turned onto a jack is a double, and the pile goes to the first hand down, not to whoever laid the first jack. The player who wins a pile leads the next card. A false slap burns a card: the offender puts the top card of their own stack face down at the bottom of the central pile, where it goes to whoever wins that pile. Players with no cards left may still slap their way back in: slap correctly and the pile is yours and you are playing again. Slap wrongly with nothing left to burn and you are out for good.

Scoring

There is no score — only the pile, and possession of it. What is worth writing down is who won: on SquareScores a game of Egyptian Ratscrew is one row on the match table, and a tap on the winner's name records it.

A worked game

Three players: Alice with eighteen cards, Ben and Cara with seventeen each. Alice turns first, and the count is what each holds after the line.

Ben's queen

Ben takes 7: Alice 16, Ben 22, Cara 14

Four plain cards, then Ben turns a queen; Cara has two chances and turns a three and a ten

A jack answered by an ace

Alice 16, Ben 21, Cara 13, two on the table

Ben starts the new pile with a jack; Cara's one chance turns up an ace, and Alice now has four

The double

Cara takes 4: Alice 14, Ben 21, Cara 17

Alice turns a six and then another six; Cara's hand lands first

A false slap

Alice 13, Ben 20, Cara 16, three on the table

Cara starts with a king; Alice turns a four, Ben slaps it and burns a card under the pile

The queen paid out

Alice takes 7: Alice 18, Ben 18, Cara 16

Alice turns a nine and then a queen; Ben's two chances are a two and a ten

The first pile is the challenge doing its work: Cara has two cards to find an honour in, turns neither, and the seven on the table are Ben's. On the second, Cara's ace answers the jack and hands Alice four chances — but Alice's first two cards are a six and a six, and the challenge is over before she has used them, because a slap beats a challenge. On the third, Ben slaps a four that matched nothing and burns a card; Alice answers the king with a queen on her last chance, Ben's two chances are plain, and the seven go to Alice, the burned card among them. Every line adds up to 52.

Ending

One player collects every card and wins, over the strenuous physical objections of everybody else.

Slap only what is there

A double is two cards of the same rank in a row; a sandwich is two of the same rank with one card between them. Nothing else is a slap, and a hand that comes down on anything else costs a card. The temptation is to slap the shape of a thing before you have read it — two red court cards look like a double for as long as it takes to hit them — so read the rank in the corner and slap the rank, not the picture. Slap on the sight of a card, never on the sound of it landing: two burns is most of a small stack, and the player who wins is not the fastest hand at the table but the one that is never wrong.

Flat hand, eyes on the pile

Your own cards are face down and you may not look at them, so watch the spot where the cards land instead. Slap with the whole hand flat and slap down rather than across, because the hand underneath wins. Keep your hand on the table between cards, not hovering over the pile, which most tables call cheating; a resting hand is faster because it has already decided where it is going.

What a court card is worth

Sixteen of the fifty-two cards are honours, so a card turned from a shuffled pack is an honour about one time in three. A jack gives one chance, so about two times in three the pile is yours. A queen gives two, and it is about even. A king is answered about two times in three, and an ace nearly four times in five. So the steepest demand is the one most likely to be met, and the humble jack is the card that wins a pile most often. Those chances are for a fresh pack; one captured in blocks is lumpier. What the arithmetic buys is attention: when a jack lands the pile is probably about to move, and when an ace lands, settle in for four.

Staying in from nothing

A player with no cards cannot flip and may still slap, and that is the way back in. Put both hands flat on the table and wait; the piles late in a game are big, and one clean slap puts thirty cards in front of you. A wrong one is the end of your game, because you have nothing to burn, so slap only what you are certain of.

Sandwiches and top-bottom

The base game slaps doubles and sandwiches. Top-bottom adds a third: when the card just turned matches the rank of the first card laid on the pile, the pile may be slapped. It rewards the player who remembers what the pile started on, and makes the beginning of every pile worth watching.

Marriages

A king and a queen turned one after the other, in either order, may be slapped. Some tables also count a king and queen with one card between them.

Runs

Three cards in a row that form a sequence — a five, a six and a seven, in any order — may be slapped. A run is harder to see than a double and the false slaps go up. Agree first whether the sequence wraps from king to ace to two.

Jokers

Add the two jokers and deal them in. The usual rule is that a joker is slapped the moment it lands, like a jack in Slapjack, and the pile goes to the first hand down. Some tables instead make a joker a challenge that only another joker or an honour can answer.

Without challenges

Play with the slaps alone: every card passes quietly, honours included, and the pile changes hands only on a double or a sandwich. It is the game for younger players.

Slapjack

The children's game this one grew out of, on its own page here. One central pile, one rank to watch for, and the first hand on a jack takes the pile; there are no challenges and no sandwiches.

How do you play Egyptian Ratscrew?

Deal the whole pack face down into a pile for each player, and in turn everybody flips their top card onto a central pile. When an ace or a court card is turned, the next player must turn another within a set number of cards — four for an ace, three for a king, two for a queen, one for a jack — or the player who laid it takes the pile. Anyone may slap the pile when two cards of the same rank land in a row, or with one card between them, and the first hand down takes it. A wrong slap costs a card, and the player who ends up holding every card wins.

What happens if you slap the pile by mistake?

You burn a card: take the top card of your own stack and put it face down at the bottom of the central pile, where it goes to whoever wins that pile. The pile stays where it is and play carries on. A player who has run out of cards and slaps wrongly has nothing to burn and is out of the game.

Can you slap during a challenge?

Yes, and the slap wins. If the cards turned in a challenge make a double or a sandwich, the pile goes to the first hand on it, whoever laid the honour. A jack turned straight onto another jack is the commonest case: it is a double, and it is slapped.

What is a sandwich in Egyptian Ratscrew?

Two cards of the same rank with exactly one other card between them: a seven, then a king, then a seven. The top card of the pile and the card two below it match, and the pile may be slapped.

Can you get back in after running out of cards?

Yes. A player with no cards stops flipping but may still slap, and a correct slap gives them the pile and puts them back in. A wrong slap while holding nothing is the end of it, because there is no card to burn.

Is Egyptian Ratscrew the same as Slapjack?

No, though one grew out of the other. Slapjack has one thing to slap, the jack, and nothing else moves the pile. Egyptian Ratscrew adds a challenge on every ace and court card and slaps on doubles and sandwiches, so there is far more to watch and far more to get wrong. Slapjack has its own page here.