Old Maid Rules

These rules are for the game Old Maid and designed to be used with The Quirky Soul's themed Old Maid decks:

Invasive Menace: An Old Maid Game
Pesky Invader: An Old Maid Game

Background

There are commercial card packs specifically designed for playing Old Maid, but the game can just as easily be played with a standard 52-card pack (The Quirky Soul offers a number of themed card deck options as well).

Game Play

The cards are shuffled and dealt out singly; it does not matter if some players have an extra card.
Players discard any pairs dealt at the beginning before play starts.
- If a triplet is held, two are discarded and one kept; if a quartet is held, two pairs are discarded.
Play starts with the player to the dealer's left offering a fan of face-down cards to the next player on the left. That player selects a card and discards it by pairing to a matching card in their hand, or adds it to the hand.
Play continues clockwise in this manner, players dropping out when they have no cards left in their hand.
The player left holding the the 'old maid' and loses.

When a standard card deck is used (or two if more than six people are playing), all but a single queen of one suit is discarded (ex. there will only be a single queen of hearts, but all other suits will still retain all queens). That single queen becomes the old maid.

Variation: When using a standard card deck, instead of removing queens, a single joker can be added. That joker will become the old maid.