Card CommonsCard Commons

Goal

Make rows of five of your chips in a straight line on the board. With 2 players, or 4 players in two teams, the first side to make 2 rows wins. With 3 players, the first to make 1 row wins.

Cards

Two standard packs shuffled together, without Jokers: 104 cards. The board is a 10×10 grid that shows every card except the Jacks twice, with a free corner in each corner. The Jacks have no spaces.

Setup

Deal 7 cards each with 2 players, 6 each with 3, and 5 each with 4. The rest of the cards are the face-down stock. With 4 players, partners sit opposite each other and share one kind of chip.

The first player is chosen at random, and play goes clockwise.

Play

1. Play a card and place a chip. Play one card from your hand face up and put one of your chips on an open space showing that card. Either of its two spaces will do.
2. The Jacks have abilities, listed under Card abilities.
3. Draw a card. After you play, draw the top card of the stock, so your hand is full again.
4. Free corners hold no chip, and each one counts as a chip of every side.
5. A row is 5 of your chips in a straight line, across, down, or diagonally, and a free corner counts as yours. A line of 6 to 9 counts as 1 row, and a full line of 10 counts as 2. Two rows that cross may share one space.
6. Chips in a row are locked. They can never be removed.
7. Dead cards. A card whose two spaces both hold chips is dead. Before you play, you may swap one dead card: discard it and draw a new one. Then take your turn as usual.
8. You must play if you can. If no card in your hand can be played, you pass. If every player passes in a row, the game is a draw.
9. The stock. The first time the stock runs out, the discards are shuffled into a new stock. If it runs out a second time, the game is a draw.

Card abilities

The cards here don’t show the eyes, so the Jacks are told apart by suit. In your hand each one carries its mark in the top-right corner.

• ★Two-eyed Jacks, J♣ and J♦. Wild: put your chip on any open space that’s not a corner.
• ✕One-eyed Jacks, J♠ and J♥. Remove one opposing chip that’s not in a row. You place no chip. A partner’s chip can’t be removed, and if no chip can be removed, this Jack can’t be played.

Playing with your own deck

Lay the board out from two more packs with the Jacks taken out, or draw it on paper, and use coins or counters as chips. It’s four 5×5 blocks, each filled in rows from the top, skipping its corner, with one suit from Ace to King (no Jack) and then a second suit:

• Top left, left to right: ♠ then ♥.
• Top right, right to left: ♣ then ♦.
• Bottom left, right to left: ♣ then ♦.
• Bottom right, left to right: ♠ then ♥.

So every card has one copy in the top half and one in the bottom half, on the opposite side.

How this version differs

• The board is this site’s own layout, because the description at pagat.com leaves the layout open apart from the corners.
• A free corner counts as a chip of every side, and nobody plays on one.
• Rows. A line of 5 to 9 counts as 1 row and a full line of 10 counts as 2. Chips in a row are locked, so a one-eyed Jack can’t remove them.
• A one-eyed Jack with no chip to remove can’t be played, and it’s not a dead card.
• A dead card may be swapped once a turn, before you play.
• The stock is rebuilt from the discards once. The second time it runs out, the game is a draw.
• If you can’t play, you pass, and the game is a draw when every player passes in a row.