How to Play Crazy Eights With Cards

Crazy Eights is a fun game similar to the game Uno in which players take turns placing cards that match either in face value or suit with the goal to eliminate all cards in their hand; the only difference is that it is being played with a normal card deck instead of a specially-made cards. All you need for this game is a single deck of cards and the knowledge of how to play the game.

This game is very simple to set up. Each player is dealt eight cards to start with, which the player can look at and sort in any way that suits him. All remaining cards are placed in the center of the table and the dealer flips the top card to begin.

Once the game is started, depending on which order players wish to proceed in, the person to either the left or right of the dealer places a card face up on the "discard" pile that matches the proceeding card in either suit or face value. For the image above, a jack or a card in the suit of clubs can be placed. If the player cannot place a card down, he draws until he can (often resulting in a very large stack of cards in his hand).

As I stated in the introduction, this game is similar to Uno, so one might ask where the wild cards, reverse, draw, or skip cards are. Wild cards are predetermined by the game's name: Crazy Eights (meaning the eight card is the wild card). One variation to this game is that the winner of one game determines what the next game's wild card is. Reverse, draw, and skip cards are optional and would generally be established by the players involved in the game. I never play this game with those "special" cards-only eight cards as wild cards.

Since the object of the game is to remove all cards from your hand, you generally do not want to draw any cards if you can help it, and to accomplish this, it often means you need to hold onto the "wild" cards as long as possible (if you have any), but I suppose this is just a luck of the draw.

This part is rather self-explanatory. Now that you know the rules, start up a game and begin playing a game or two. Have fun and enjoy!