Crazy Eights

Crazy Eights is a relaxed family card game that anyone can pick up in a minute. You try to be the first player to get rid of every card in your hand, and eights are your wild cards.

How to play

You play against one, two or three computer players, depending on the level. With two players each person is dealt seven cards. With three or four players each gets five. One card is turned up to start the discard pile, and the rest of the deck is the stock.

• Your turn: play one card that matches the top card of the discard pile by suit or by number. On a 6 of hearts, you may play any heart or any 6.
• Eights are wild. An 8 goes on anything. When you play one, you pick the suit that comes next, and the table remembers the suit you named.
• Nothing fits: tap the stock to draw a card. Keep drawing until you can play, and then play. If the stock runs out, the discard pile, except for its top card, is shuffled to make a new stock. If there is nothing left to draw, you pass.
• Winning: the first player to empty their hand wins the round. If a round somehow stalls with nobody able to move, the player holding the fewest cards wins.

The cards you can play stand up a little higher than the rest, so you do not have to check every card yourself. On a phone, tap a raised card to play it. On a computer, click it. There are no skip, reverse or draw-two cards in this version, so the rules stay short.

The levels

Crazy Eights has three levels here. They change how many opponents you face and how well they play.

• Easy: one opponent, who plays at random.
• Medium: two opponents, who save their eights for when they truly need them.
• Hard: three opponents, who count every card and try to leave you stuck.

The computers play fairly and do not look at your hand. Because of that, a fourth level with the same three opponents would not play any harder than Hard, so the game stops at three. In the project's own testing, an even match would be a win in one round out of every two, three or four, depending on the number of opponents, and the test tracks how a medium-strength player compares to that share at each level.

Today's game

The daily game is played at Medium, and everyone gets the same deal on the same calendar day. It records whether you won or one of the computers did.

Tips

1. Hold your eights back. They are the cards that save you when nothing else fits, so do not play one while you have a regular choice.
2. Play the suit you have the most of. If you can keep playing cards from one suit, you rarely have to draw.
3. When you play an 8, name the suit you hold the most cards in.
4. When an opponent has to draw, they held nothing that matched. Name a suit that gave them trouble.
5. Spend your lone cards first. A card that is the only one of its suit in your hand is hard to place later.
6. Count the eights. There are only four in the deck, so once you have seen a few, you know how many wild cards the others can still hold.
7. Remember that drawing is only allowed when you have no play. You cannot hold a card back by drawing instead.

A bit of history

Crazy Eights belongs to a large family of card games where you shed cards by matching, and many tables add special action cards of their own. This site keeps the simple version.

Questions

Do I have to play a card if I can? Yes. The stock only works when none of your cards fits, so if you can play, tap a raised card.

What happens after I play an 8? You choose the next suit. The other player must match that suit, or play an 8 of their own.

Why only three levels? The computers play honestly and cannot see your cards, so more opponents is the only way to make them harder, and three is the most the table holds.

How long does a round take? Usually a few minutes. There is no score to keep, since each round has a winner.