Old Maid

Overview

Pair off every card in your hand and avoid being left holding the single unmatched one. A children's game of pure chance and very small deception.

No governing body publishes rules for this game. This page describes the most common form. House rules vary, so agree them before you start.

1. Setup

Take a standard deck and remove one queen, leaving 51 cards and three queens. That odd queen is the Old Maid.

Purpose-made Old Maid decks use picture pairs and a single unpaired character instead.

Deal the entire deck out. Some players will have one more card than others, which does not matter.

2. Discarding pairs

Every player looks at their hand and discards all pairs face down — two cards of the same rank. Four of a kind counts as two pairs.

Some house rules require pairs to match colour as well; the standard game does not.

3. Play

Hold your remaining cards face down in a fan.

The player to the dealer's left offers their fan to the player on their left, who draws one card blind.

If the drawn card pairs with something in their hand, they discard the pair.

Play continues clockwise, each player offering their fan to the next.

4. Winning

Players who run out of cards are safe and out of the game.

Play continues until one player is left holding the unmatched queen. That player loses. Everyone else wins equally — there is no ranking.

5. Strategy

There is essentially none, which is the point. The only skill is not signalling which card is the Old Maid when offering your fan — children give it away by pushing it forward, or by holding it apart.

Experienced players deliberately move the odd card around the fan between turns.

Commonly argued

• One queen is removed, leaving three.
• You draw blind, from a fan held face down.
• There is one loser, not one winner.
• Pairs are matched by rank, not colour, unless agreed otherwise.