How to Play Old Maid

Objective

Get rid of your cards by making pairs and laying them down. Every rank pairs off neatly except the queens. With one queen taken out, three are left, so one of them can never be matched. Whoever holds that last queen when everything else is paired loses the round.

Setup

Take one queen out of the deck and set it aside without showing it. Many families remove the queen of clubs, but any queen works. Shuffle and deal all 51 cards one at a time. It is fine if some players get one more card than others.

Everyone looks at their hand and lays down any pairs (two cards of the same rank, such as two 7s). If you have three of a kind, lay down two of them and keep the third.

How to play

The dealer fans their hand face down and offers it to the player on their left, who draws one card without seeing it. If that card makes a pair, the player lays the pair down. That player then offers their own hand to the next player on the left, and so on around the table.

When a player runs out of cards, they are safe and drop out of the turn order. Play continues until every card has been paired except one queen.

1. 1Fan your hand face down for the player on your left
2. 2Draw one card from the player on your right
3. 3Lay down any pair you make
4. 4Pass the turn to the left
5. 5Run out of cards and you are safe

Winning

There is no score. Everyone who runs out of cards is safe, and the player left holding the odd queen is the Old Maid and loses the round. Some families also cheer the first player to empty their hand as the winner.

If someone lays down two cards that are not a pair, more than one card will be left over at the end. The player who made the mistake is the Old Maid for that round.

Variations

Joker as the Maid: leave all four queens in and add a single joker. The joker is the card nobody can pair.

Matching colors: for older players, a pair must be the same rank and the same color, such as the 7 of hearts and the 7 of diamonds. If you removed the queen of clubs, the queen of spades becomes the Old Maid.

Black Peter and Vieux Garçon: European cousins in which the unlucky card left over at the end is a jack, or a special picture card, instead of a queen.

Picture decks: store-bought Old Maid decks use illustrated cards instead of numbers. The rules are the same.

Tips from the table

Shuffle your hand before you offer it, especially when you are holding the queen. Players remember where cards were.

Keep a straight face when someone reaches toward the queen. Faces give away more than cards do.

Some players push one card up a little to tempt the next player. It works once or twice; after that, everyone knows the trick.

With very young players, lay pairs face up and help them spot matches. The game moves faster and nobody gets stuck by mistake.

Frequently asked