Go Fish Rules

Collect four of a kind — all four Jacks, all four sevens — by asking the other players for the cards you need. Four of a kind is a book, and you lay it face up in front of you the instant it completes.

There are thirteen books in a deck, one for each rank. The game ends when all thirteen are made, and whoever has the most wins it.

• The game is written for two to six players. Every table on this site is currently four — you and three computer players — because the create-a-room form doesn't let you choose a number yet. That's on the list, not a rule of the game.
• The deal is five cards each at four or more players, and seven each at two or three.
• The rest of the deck goes face down in the middle. This page calls it the pool; you may have grown up calling it the ocean or the stock. Same pile.
• A book you're dealt counts. If four of a kind turns up in your opening hand it goes straight down, before anybody has asked for anything.

A turn is one ask. You name a player and a rank:

• You must already hold at least one card of the rank you ask for. You can't fish for a rank you have none of — that's what makes the game a game of memory rather than luck.
• You can't ask yourself, and you can't ask a player who has no cards. The table will refuse and tell you why.

Then one of two things happens:

• They have some. They hand over every card of that rank — not one, all of them — and you go again.
• They have none. "Go fish." You draw one card from the pool. If it happens to be the rank you just asked for, you go again. Otherwise the turn passes to your left.

Any time four of a kind comes together in your hand — from an ask, from a draw, at the deal — it goes down face up straight away. You don't get to hold a book back.

The moment your hand empties you draw one card from the pool — one, not a fresh hand — and you draw it immediately, as part of whatever just emptied your hand, not at the start of your next turn.

If the pool is empty too, you're out of the asking. You can't ask and nobody can ask you. You keep every book you've already made, and they still count at the end — being out of cards is not being out of the game.

When the thirteenth book goes down, the game is over. Most books wins.

A tie is a tie. If two players finish level on books they both win, and the table says so. There's no tiebreak on who booked first, because no traditional telling of the game gives one and inventing one here would be making up a rule nobody plays by.

Go Fish has no single authority, and most houses play it slightly differently. Where there's a real choice, here's the one this table makes, so nothing catches you out:

The question	How this table plays it
Does a successful ask earn another go?	Yes. Keep asking until you miss.
If you fish out the very rank you asked for?	You go again. Some families end the turn on any "go fish".
Must you hold the rank you ask for?	Yes. The near-universal rule — without it the deduction disappears.
When your hand empties, how many do you draw?	One. Both forms are played; one card is what Bicycle and Pagat describe.
Can you hold a completed book back?	No. It goes down automatically — otherwise a player could stall the game forever.
Can two players share the win?	Yes. Level on books, both win.

If your family plays one of these the other way and you'd like the choice, say so — shannon@newfiecards.com. 120s already has house rules the host picks; there's no reason this couldn't.

Scat (31), 120s (Auction) and Krazy 8's are all playable too.