Krazy 8's Rules
Match it, or play an eight and change the world
Krazy 8's is playable, and it's in beta
Krazy 8's is in the lobby now. Start a table and you'll be seated with three computer players and play a hand through to somebody going out.
Beta means it's new, not that it's broken. The rules below are the ones the table deals. No person has yet played a whole hand of it by hand — a test script has played hundreds. You may well be the first to find something.
Objective
Get rid of every card in your hand. The first player out wins the hand, and scores the value of everything still left in everybody else's hands.
The Table
- The game is written for two to seven 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.
- The deal is five cards each at three or more players, and seven each heads-up.
- The rest of the pack is the stock, face down. One card is turned up beside it to start the pile.
- If that turned-up card is an eight it's buried and another is turned. A hand doesn't open with a wild card and nobody's nomination.
Your Turn
Play one card onto the pile. It has to match the top card either by rank or by the suit in force — a seven of hearts goes on any seven, or on any heart.
An eight is wild. You can play an eight on absolutely anything, and when you do, you name the suit the next player has to follow.
If you can't play, you draw — one card at a time from the stock until you get something you can play. A card you draw can be played the same turn. And you can't draw if you're already holding a legal play: the table will refuse and tell you so.
When the Stock Runs Out
- The pile gets shuffled back in. Everything under the top card goes back to make a new stock, and the top card stays where it is.
- If there's genuinely nothing left — every card in somebody's hand, one card on the pile — then a player who can't go simply passes.
- If nobody at all can move, the hand is over. It's scored the same way as any other hand. A blocked hand never sits there forever waiting for somebody to notice.
Scoring
When somebody goes out, everyone else counts what's left in their hand and the winner scores the lot:
| Card | Points |
|---|---|
| Each eight | 50 |
| Each Jack, Queen or King | 10 |
| Each Ace | 1 |
| Everything else | Its face value — a seven is 7 |
A game here is a single hand. Somebody goes out, the hand is scored, and that's the game. The engine can play a match to 100 or 500 with the scores carried from hand to hand, and no table on this site does that yet.
The Newfoundland specials aren't in yet
The rules above are the plain game. The ones we grew up adding — a two making the next player draw two, a jack skipping them, an ace turning the play around, the queen of spades costing five — are written and are switched off. No table on this site plays them today.
They're off on purpose rather than missing: plain rules first, and then the host picks. 120s already works that way — its host chooses what happens when everybody passes and whether scores can go below zero — and this game will get the same treatment. When it does, this page changes with it.
Two small things that are choices all the same
- The card turned up at the deal never does anything special. Even once the specials are switched on, a jack turned up won't skip the first player and a two turned up won't make them draw.
- Draw penalties won't stack. When twos are switched on, somebody hit by a two draws their two and misses their turn — they can't answer with a two of their own and pass it along.
Neither is written down in any book. They're stated here because "the program happens to do it that way" isn't a decision anybody made.
The other games
Scat (31), 120s (Auction) and Go Fish are all playable too.