🃏 Joker Golf · Rules
2–4 players · 9 hands · Lowest score wins
Card Values
| Card | Points |
|---|
| Jack or Queen | 10 |
| 2–10 | Face value |
| Ace | 1 |
| King | 0 |
| Joker | −3 |
Lower is always better. Jokers and Kings are especially valuable.
Goal
Score as low as possible over 9 hands. The player with the lowest total at the end wins.
Dealing
- Use a standard 52-card deck plus 2 Jokers.
- Use 2 decks if you have more than 2 players.
- Each player is dealt 9 cards face-down in a 3×3 grid.
- Each player turns the first 3 cards received face-up.
- The 3 face-up cards are place in a row/column/diagonal, like tic-tac-toe.
- 1 card is flipped face-up to start a discard pile. The rest are the draw pile.
Your Turn
On your turn:
- Take the top Discard or Draw.
- Either keep the draw and replace one of your cards, or discard it.
- If you keep the draw and trade a card, the old card goes into the discard pile.
- If you discard the draw, then flip a card face-up to see what you got instead.
Ending a Hand
- When a player has all 9 cards face-up, they end the hand.
- Every other player gets one more turn.
- Then all remaining face-down cards are revealed and scores are tallied.
Scoring a Hand
Add up the values of your 9 cards, with one important exception:
Three of a kind in a line scores zero for the entire row.
The Match
- Play 9 hands (like 9 holes of golf).
- Who goes first rotates each hand.
- Add each hand’s score to a running total.
- After 9 hands, the lowest total wins.
Tips
- Prefer Jokers, Kings, low cards (A–4), or 3 of a kind.
- If you can't get a row of zero, go for a row of low.
- Building mutiple matching lines of three of a kinds is the best way to chop your points.
- Watch the discard pile for a card that matches what you already have showing.
- Kings and Jokers can kill your row, costing even more moves to recover.
- Sometimes discarding a bad draw and flipping is better than keeping a high card.
- Sometimes keeping a high card is better than going out and killing the game.
- Choose to discard wisely, because sometimes a card you receive comes in threes or more.
- Going out early applies pressure, but eye your score before you decide to kill it.
