Golf

Full rules

1. Overview
2. Setup
3. Playing a turn
4. End of a round
5. Scoring
6. Winning the game
7. Tips for beginners
8. Variants

Overview

Golf is a simple game of swapping cards. Everyone has a small grid of six cards in front of them, most of them hidden at first. On your turn you take one new card and swap it for one of yours, trying to end up with cards worth as few points as possible. Like in real golf, the lowest score wins.

A game lasts 9 rounds, called holes.

• Players: 2–8.
• You need: one standard 52-card deck without jokers for 2–4 players; for 5–8 players, shuffle two decks together. You also need paper and pencil to write down the scores.

Setup

1. Dealer: pick one player to be the dealer – the person who shuffles and hands out the cards.
2. Deal: the dealer shuffles and deals the cards one at a time, face down (picture side hidden), clockwise, until everyone has 6 cards.
3. Your grid: without looking at them, lay your 6 cards face down in front of you in 2 rows of 3. One card sits above another, so your grid has 3 columns of 2 cards each. Your cards stay in this grid for the whole round – you never hold them in your hand.
4. Stock: the remaining cards go face down in the middle. This is the stock (the draw pile).
5. Discard pile: the dealer turns the top card of the stock face up next to it. This starts the discard pile.
6. Peek: each player turns 2 of their own cards face up, whichever two they like. Everyone can now see these cards.

A grid at the start might look like this ("▢" is a face-down card):

Playing a turn

The player to the dealer's left starts. Play then continues clockwise (to the left). On your turn:

1. Take one card – either

• the top card of the discard pile (you can see what it is), or
• the top card of the stock (a surprise – look at it without showing it yet).

2. Use it or throw it away:

• Replace one of your 6 cards with it – face-up or face-down, it doesn't matter. The card you remove goes face up on the discard pile. The new card is placed face up in the empty spot. If the card you remove was face down, you see it for the first time as you discard it.
• Or discard it: if you drew from the stock, you may simply put the card face up on the discard pile without using it.

A card taken from the discard pile must always be used to replace one of your cards – you may not take it and put it straight back.

Your turn is then over. Once a card is face up in your grid, it stays face up.

Example: The discard pile shows a 3♦. Anna has a face-up 9♠ in her grid, so she takes the 3♦, puts it where the 9♠ was, and discards the 9♠. Ben doesn't want the 9♠, so he draws from the stock: a Q♣ (worth 10). Too high – he discards it without using it.

End of a round

As soon as any player has all 6 cards face up, the end is near: every other player gets exactly one more turn. Then the round (the "hole") ends.

Now all players turn their remaining face-down cards face up, and everyone counts their score.

If the stock runs out during a round, leave the top discard where it is, shuffle the rest of the discard pile and place it face down as the new stock.

Scoring

Each card is worth:

Pairs: if both cards in a column have the same rank (for example two 7s, or two Queens), that column scores 0, no matter what the cards are worth. This even applies to two 2s: they cancel each other out to 0 instead of giving −4.

Add up your three columns – that is your score for the hole. Scores can be negative.

Example: At the end of a hole, Carla's grid looks like this:

Column 1	Column 2	Column 3
7♠	K♥	5♦
7♣	2♠	Q♦

• Column 1: two 7s form a pair → 0
• Column 2: King (0) + 2 (−2) → −2
• Column 3: 5 + Queen (10) → 15

Carla scores 0 − 2 + 15 = 13 points for this hole.

Write down everyone's score after each hole.

Winning the game

Play 9 holes. After each hole, the player to the dealer's left becomes the new dealer. After the ninth hole, add up each player's scores. The player with the lowest total wins.

Tips for beginners

• Build pairs. A pair in a column wipes out the column, so a pair of Queens is as good as two Kings.
• Keep your Kings and 2s – they are the best cards in the game.
• Don't reveal high cards. Swap a hidden card only for a low card; turning up a card by accident can show a 10 you're then stuck with.
• Watch your neighbour. Before discarding, check whether the player after you can use that card to make a pair.
• Don't rush to finish. Turning up your last card ends the hole – if your score is still high, the others get one more turn to improve and you may lose badly.

Variants

All of these are optional – agree on them before the game.

• Flip after discarding: when you discard a card drawn from the stock, you may (or, at some tables, must) turn one of your face-down cards face up.
• Jokers: add the jokers to the deck. Each is worth −2 (or −5 at some tables).
• 4-card Golf: each player has a 2 × 2 grid. Quicker and more luck-based.
• 9-card Golf: each player has a 3 × 3 grid; a column scores 0 only if all three cards have the same rank.
• 18 holes: play a full course for a longer game.
• Four of a kind bonus: at some tables, four cards of the same rank in two neighbouring columns score −20 instead of 0.
• Harsher court cards: Jack = 11 and Queen = 12, so only Kings are "free".