Old Maid card game: pairs, the draw and the odd queen

Old Maid is a shedding game whose only job is to leave one person holding one unmatched card. That person loses. Everyone else has discarded their way out. It is a children's game, recorded in American print in the 1830s and played under other names elsewhere: Black Peter in German, Vieux Garçon in French.

You need a standard 52-card deck and at least two players. Three to six is comfortable. More than six still works, with smaller hands. One deck is the game this page teaches. A crowd can add a second deck and still remove only one queen, so a single odd card remains.

Make the deck odd in one of these two ways, and say which you used:

1. Remove one queen. Three queens stay in the deck. Two of them will pair with each other. The third queen can never find a match. The deck has 51 cards. Any queen may be the one you remove. The suit does not matter.
2. Add a joker. Keep all four queens, so they will pair off as two pairs. The joker is the odd card. The deck has 53 cards. The loser is the player holding the joker, who is still called the Old Maid.

Do not do both. Two odd cards means two losers and a muddled ending. Do not remove a queen and also leave a joker in.

Commercial Old Maid packs skip this step. Every card is printed as a pair except one picture, the Old Maid, and you deal that pack as it comes. The play is identical.

Shuffle so the odd queen is not sitting where the dealer can feel the bottom card. Use a full shuffle, as in the how to shuffle cards guide, then offer a cut.

Old Maid belongs with the other family games in the games of chance hub. It is a matching game, like collecting books, except the last unmatched card is a penalty instead of a prize.

Deal the entire deck, one card at a time, starting at the dealer's left. There is no stock. If 51 does not divide evenly, some players have one extra card. With four players, the hands are 13, 13, 13 and 12. The extra card is arithmetic, not a choice.

Players pick up their cards and discard pairs. A pair is two cards of the same rank: two sevens, two kings, two aces. Suits are irrelevant. The ace of spades pairs with the ace of diamonds.

• Two of a rank: discard both.
• Three of a rank: discard two, keep one. The leftover card can pair later when you draw the fourth, or it can be the card someone else pulls.
• Four of a rank: discard them as two pairs. Your hand loses all four.

Discarded pairs go face up in a shared pile or in front of the player who discarded them. They are out of the game. Nobody plays them again. Spread them enough that the table can see a rank is gone, which matters once only a few cards are left.

The three queens do not all pair. Two queens form a pair and leave. The third queen stays in someone's hand until the end, unless you are using the joker method, in which case all four queens can leave as two pairs and the joker stays.

Look once, discard every pair you can, and square your hand. Do not show faces. The rest of the game is played from the backs.

If the opening pairs empty your hand, you are already safe. You sit out. That is rare, and it is legal.

The dealer starts, in the usual written rules, by offering their hand. Fan the cards face down so the ranks are hidden and the backs look as alike as you can make them. Spread them wide enough that the next player is choosing a card, not grabbing a clump.

The player to the dealer's left pulls exactly one card and adds it to their hand. They do not show it to the table. If it matches a rank they already hold, they discard that pair at once. If it does not match, it stays, and their hand is one card larger.

Then that same player fans their own hand face down for the next player to the left, who pulls one card, and so on around the table.

Direction is a house rule. This page uses: you offer your hand to the player on your left, and they pull. Some families reverse it, so the player to move pulls from the fan on their right. The cards still travel around the table. Pick one direction and keep it.

Mix your own hand before you offer it. A player who saw the queen on the left of an unmixed fan will avoid that side. You may not pull two cards, put one back, or ask for a rank. The draw is blind.

Discard a new pair before you offer the hand onward. A player who discards their last card on that pull is safe and does not offer an empty fan. Skip anyone who is already out.

Play continues until every pair has been discarded and one card remains. That card is the unpaired queen, or the joker if you added one. The player holding it is the Old Maid and loses.

The ending usually shows itself one turn early. Two players remain, and one of them has the single odd card. If the other player pulls it, they become the holder. You do not score points and you do not pay a stake. The loss is the name. Making the loser deal next is a chore, not a bet.

A reversed house rule calls the last holder the winner. Say "last card wins" before the deal if that is what you want.

Three of a kind still discards as one pair plus a leftover. That leftover is not a second Old Maid. Only the removed queen, or the added joker, is unmatched at the end.

Count the discard if a hand feels long. With 51 cards you finish with 25 pairs and 1 card: 50 + 1 = 51. With a joker, 26 pairs plus the joker is 53. A missing pair means a card is on the floor.

Spades uses the same deck for a partnership trick game to 500. Old Maid uses it to pass one unlucky card. The queen that loses here is an ordinary queen in Spades.

If every offer is a blind pull from a mixed hand, no choice improves your odds. The loser is whoever holds the odd card when the pairs run out.

What looks like skill is usually a face you were not supposed to see: a bent corner, a flash, a fan that was not mixed, a bottom card from the cut. Fix those and the result is the shuffle again.

The player dealt 13 cards in a four-player, 51-card deal is slightly more likely to hold the queen at the first moment, and also more likely to hold opening pairs. After that the queen moves. You do not protect yourself by playing slowly. With two players the hands are 26 and 25, and a mixed fan still makes each pull blind.

Special packs print every card as a pair except one Old Maid picture. Read the box once, then use the same pull-and-discard rules. Very young players can start from a smaller hand if an adult has already removed some ordinary pairs. Keep one queen unmatched. Do not remove the queens by accident and then discover there is no Old Maid left.

Mix your hand. Offer it face down. Pull one card. Discard a pair if you made one.

Old Maid is not a betting game. Do not put money on the odd queen when children are playing. The historical cousins sometimes used a drinking penalty for adults. The children's game dropped the penalty and kept the loser.

Adults who want an even stake are doing something else, and that is for people 18 or older, or the legal age where you live. A coinflip is an even proposition you can check after the round. It is not this game. The responsible gambling page is for adult play.

A few habits keep the loss friendly. The loser can deal next, or the deal simply rotates. If a face shows, mix that hand and offer it again. Pairs go face up so a leftover king can be checked. At the end, show the Old Maid, put the removed queen back or take the joker out, and the deck is 52 again.

Rummy is the next game when the table is ready for draws and melds. Euchre is further along: 24 cards, trump, and a partner. Box the deck at 52. The queen you removed is the card most often left in the lid.

See also go fish, slapjack and the home card game of war.