Unofficial Rules for Frustration, the Card Game

Maybe the player before you puts down their last card, and maybe you've been collecting Aces. Now these cards count against you. And maybe you've had the cards necessary to put down for a couple of turns now, but you were cleverly holding on to them and collecting cards to play on other hands that are already on the table. Your strategy has backfired. How do you feel? But then the next hand you might be lucky. You're on the table and out before some players even know what level they're on.

The game of Frustration is an emotional roller-coaster, a thrill ride that appeals to the rowdiest teenage hooligans and their grandmothers, too. Frustration is the anti-card game. It lasts all night. It can be made up on the spot if you can't find the rules. The younger folk might have the advantage on endurance, but the older folk, used to life's ups and downs, might think more clearly, keep their cool.

There is no one set of official rules for Frustration, but this is the game as my family plays it. It requires two decks of cards and is best with three to six people. One person keeps track of the score and which level each player is working on. You graduate to the next hand when you put the required cards on the table, and your score is tallied by how many cards are left in your hand each round. The person who ended the round would have a score of zero for that round, so the lower the score the better. A round ends when one player runs out of cards. Each player begins with eleven cards, and there are eleven levels:

1. 2 sets of 3

2. 2 runs of 3

3. 1 run of 4 and 1 set of 3

4. 2 sets of 4

5. 1 run of 5 and 1 set of 3

6. 3 sets of 3

7. 1 run of 7

8. 2 runs of 4

9. 1 run of 6 and 1 set of 3

10. 2 sets of 5

11. 1 run of 9

Scoring:

3 to 8 = 5 points

9 to King = 10 points

Aces = 15 points

2's and Jokers = 20 points

Each turn must consist of a player picking up from the middle (either from the discard pile which is face-up or the unused cards which are face-down), and then discarding one of their own cards to end the turn. Two's and Jokers are wild, so they can represent any other card in the deck. You can add your cards to those already laid on the table by other players only if you have already put your own hand down.

Some good strategies for Frustration include collecting only low cards so you don't get caught with a high-scoring hand, paying attention to which cards the other players choose from the face-up part of the center pile to have an idea what suit they are working in, and (as my family loves to do) joking around loudly and silly-ly in order to distract the other players. Just don't be surprised when you accidentally also distract yourself!