How to Play Golf, the Card Game

Golf the card game is an easy game to learn and loads of fun to play. All you need to play is a deck of cards for every five people playing and some form of punishment for the loser to spice it up.

Set-up

All the players should be seated in a circle and cards dealt face-down in a clockwise (or counter-clockwise if that's how you swing) manner until everyone has received six cards. After six cards have been dealt to everyone, each player will need to arrange their six cards into two rows of three or three columns of two (whichever makes more sense), with cards still face-down. Now, each player will turn over any two cards that they want in the same order that the cards were dealt.

Rules

Leave the remaining cards in the middle as a draw pile and create a second pile by flipping the top card off the draw pile over. When its your turn, you have three choices. You can either flip one of your face-down cards over, switch any of your cards with the top face-up card in the middle, or draw a card from the pile and either replace it with one of your cards or put it back into the middle face-up. Each person takes a turn until one person reveals all six cards. As soon as a player flips over all six cards, everyone else has one more move before they need to flip over all their cards as well.

Scoring

This is where the real fun begins. Just like the real game of golf, golf the card game requires players to get the lowest score possible, which is zero. Kings are worth zero points, Aces are worth one point, queens and jacks are worth ten points, and the rest of the cards are worth their face value (ex. a six of clubs is worth six points). If there are only 4 kings, how can someone get a zero score? By matching pairs within columns, which gives the column zero points. For example, if a person has two jacks in the same column, that column would be worth zero points, not twenty. Note, it only works within columns, and not rows. Also, remember that even though 10's, jacks, and queens share the same value, they are not the same card. A 10 matched with a queen would be twenty points, not zero.

Variations

For an even more exciting twist to golf, you can play a version that I like to call "All-in". If a person manages to get 60 points, then everyone else in the game loses and gets the punishment. Remember though, matching pairs in columns will cancel each other and if you don't get 60 points, you're screwed.

With a great punishment and a fun group of people to play with, golf is sure to entertain you and your friends for a long time.