CRAZY 8’s: RULES OF PLAYING THE GAME

The Crazy 8s card game is a fun- filled pastime especially for those who like to indulge in card games along with family or friends. It has many variations, but the basic pattern of the game has about two or more players and can be played by following quick and simple rules. The main objective of the players is to get rid of all their cards and send it off to a discard pile. The general trend is to use a model pack consisting of 52 cards, but many variations have cards that have personalized pictures and in some other variations joker (the card) is used as wild card. Many games even use more than a pack. Some of the basic rules are as follows:
1) In a game of two players, each player would be handed out seven to eight cards and in case there are more than two players, each one gets about 5 cards. The other cards that are remaining in the deck are put in the middle of a game table and are made to face down, with the topmost card then being turned to face up and is placed next to pick up card pile in order to start a discard pile. This is the card that begins the game.
2) The person sitting left to the one dealing out the cards begins the game by putting one of his cards on the top of discard pile. While doing this he/she must take note of the following two instructions: the first is that the card should match suit or value with the one on the discard pile and the second guideline is that the card that the player plays out should be an eight belonging to any suit. In case the card turns out to be an eight of any of the suits, the player can alter the game’s suit to the one that he wants. So in case the card on top of the pile is say a five of hearts, the player in turn can either dish out a five of hearts or an eight belonging to any of the suits. In case the person declares the next suit to be a diamond, then the player playing next has to give out either a spade or he can give out another eight, thereby altering the suit once again.
3) In case the player does not possess a card that has the matching suit or value and either doesn’t possess an eight or doesn’t want to play that, he can pick up one card fro pick-up pile and keep on picking till he is able to get a card suitable to play. Since this can include a person picking many cards to find the suitable one, the players can put maximum ceiling on the number that a player can pick in a go before the game starts.
4) The game ends when any one of participants is not left with any cards.
5) To determine the score, a penalty core is given by adding cards left with the remaining player(s). Cards from 2 to 9 are given 5 points, the ones that are ’10,J, Q, K’ are given 10 and the Aces 15. The cards with the number 8 are given 50 points. The play ends when a player gets a score equalling or surpassing a predetermined value (say,1000).