Trash card game: Garbage rules and the race to one card

Trash is a race to fill a personal layout. Garbage is the same race under the other common name. You do not need two rule sheets. If the table says Garbage and you learned Trash, deal 10 and play.

This page teaches the 10-card race-down as the main game. Each round, the player who finishes their layout shrinks by one card for the next round. Everyone else stays where they are. The match ends when someone wins a round on a one-card layout.

Use a standard 52-card deck for two to four players. Deal 10 cards face down to each player, in two rows of five, and do not let anyone look. The top row is slots 1 through 5. The bottom row is slots 6 through 10. Ace belongs in slot 1. A 10 belongs in slot 10.

The undealt cards are the stock, face down. There is no discard pile until the first unplayable card.

Two players: 20 cards dealt, 32 in the stock. Three players: 30 dealt, 22 in the stock. Four players: 40 dealt, 12 in the stock, which is tight, so shuffle the discard back into a stock as soon as the stock empties. Five or six players need a second deck. Five layouts of 10 are 50 cards, and one deck leaves a stock of 2. Six layouts are 60 cards, which does not fit in one deck at all.

An 8-card layout, two rows of four, is a shorter start. Slots are Ace through 8. Keep the jack wild unless you agreed otherwise, and let 9, 10, queen and king end the turn. The race-down rule stays the same.

Shuffle between rounds. A run left in order from the last layout walks onto the next deal. Use the how to shuffle cards steps.

The player left of the dealer goes first, then play passes left. On your turn, draw the top card of the stock. You may not look at any face-down card in your layout before you decide.

If the card matches an empty slot, put it face up in that slot. Take the face-down card that was sitting there, turn it up, and try to place that card too. Keep going. This chain is the whole skill of the game, and it is mostly luck: you place whatever you flipped.

The chain stops when the card in your hand cannot be placed. Discard it face up beside the stock. That is the discard pile, and the turn ends. The next player draws from the stock.

A card cannot be placed when its slot is already filled, or when it is a queen or a king in the common 10-card rules. You do not choose a different slot for a number. Slot 4 gets a 4. A wild jack is the exception below.

If the stock runs out, shuffle the discard into a new stock and keep the current card in hand. The round ends the instant one player has a face-up card in every slot they are using. Unfinished layouts are scooped and shuffled. They do not score.

Drawing the discard instead of the stock is a house rule. This version draws from the stock only. Say so if you turn that on, because a face-up 4 is a large change when slot 4 is still empty.

Trash is in the games of chance hub. You can count the empty slots. You cannot force the next flip.

Face cards are where Trash tables split. Say this part out loud.

In the 10-card game this page teaches:

• Jack is wild. You may put a jack face up in any slot that is still face down. Then you flip the card that was there and continue the chain. A jack does not have its own slot, because 11 is not on a 10-card layout.
• Queen and king have no slot. Either one ends the chain. Discard it, and the turn passes.

When you are down to a one-card layout, that single slot is the ace slot in the usual race, and you may fill it with an ace or with a jack. That is the match-winning placement.

The king disagreement

Some houses treat only the king as dead, and they let the queen be wild as well as the jack. Some houses treat every face card as dead, so a jack ends the turn too. Some houses say a king "skips": you discard it, the turn ends, and the next player also loses a turn. That skip is a house rule. The common published version is quieter. A king is a discard that ends your turn, and play passes to the next player as normal. A queen does the same.

Do not discover this on the first king of the night. "King ends your turn" and "king skips the next player" are different penalties.

Twelve-card Trash

The 12-card version gives every court card except the king a home.

King is the dead card. You discard a king and the turn ends. Jack is not wild in this version, because jack is slot 11. Queen is slot 12, not a wild and not a dead card.

Deal 12 face down, often as two rows of six. Two players fit in one deck. Four players deal 48, so add a second deck or accept an early reshuffle. The round winner loses one slot next time, usually the queen slot first, then the jack, down to a single ace. If your family plays 12 cards and calls it Garbage, you are on this variant of the same game.

Winning a round does one thing. That player's next layout has one fewer card. Everyone else deals the same number they had.

Start at 10. Suppose four players and Ana fills her layout first. Next round Ana is dealt 9 cards, in slots Ace through 9. Ben, Cho and Dia are dealt 10 again. If Cho wins the 9-against-10 round, Cho drops to 9 and Ana stays at 9 if she did not win. The drop belongs to the player who finished, not to the table.

Continue until someone wins a round while holding a one-card layout. They win the match. In the 10-card scoring of slots, that last card is filled by an ace or by a wild jack. In the 12-card version, once you are down to one slot, an ace fills it, and a jack is a normal slot card only while slot 11 still exists.

A player on 4 cards uses Ace through 4. A drawn 5 is as dead as a king. The leader misses more draws, and players still on 10 hit more often. Unfinished layouts score nothing. Only a completed layout matters, and it shrinks that player by one card.

Only the player to move can place cards, so two layouts cannot finish together. The first completed layout ends the round.

You have slots 1 through 10 face down. You draw a 4. Slot 4 gets the 4, face up. You flip the card that was in slot 4 and it is an ace. Slot 1 gets the ace. You flip slot 1 and it is a jack. The jack is wild, so you put it in any remaining face-down slot. You choose slot 10, because high slots are no more valuable than low ones except that you want the chain to continue, and a wild is the only card that lets you pick. You flip slot 10 and it is a king. The king cannot be placed. You discard the king. The turn ends.

Look at the turn: one draw filled slots 4, 1 and 10, and the king stopped the chain. The next player starts with a fresh stock draw.

A queen from the stock ends the turn with zero slots filled. Four queens and four kings are 8 cards of 52, about 15 percent, and each of them ends a turn immediately. Duplicates of filled slots end the turn too, and that share grows as the layout fills. A player on two cards, Ace and 2, treats a 3 as a dead card. That is why a player still on 10 can catch a leader on 2.

Thirty-one is a different race on the same deck: three cards, one suit, and a knock. In Trash the number is the slot. When the round ends, shuffle every card, including the winner's layout, and say the new counts as you deal: "Ana 9, everyone else 10."

Trash has more local rules than it has printed ones. Lock this list:

• 10 cards or 12. This page's main game is 10, race-down, jack wild, queen and king dead. Twelve uses jack as 11 and queen as 12.
• Who drops a card. Only the round winner. A variant where everyone drops together is a different match. Do not switch at round 4.
• King. Discard and the turn ends, which is the usual rule. Or king skips the next player's turn. Pick one.
• Queen. Dead, like a king, in the 10-card game taught here. Wild, at some tables. Slot 12, only in the 12-card game.
• Discard draw. Off in this version. On, if you want a memory layer.
• Decks. One deck through four players. Add a deck at five or six.

None of these adds a casino edge. The winner is the player who completes the one-card layout. Children should play for the win. If adults stake the match, 18+ applies, or the legal age where you live, and the stake is agreed before the deal. Limits are on the responsible gambling page.

Keep two clean rows so ranks do not leak at the edges. Euchre uses a 24-card pack cut from the same deck and asks you to follow suit. Trash uses the full deck and never does. Count back to 52, or to 104 if you added a deck, before you box the cards.

See also golf, klondike solitaire and skip-bo.